Plush Love Volume 1, Episode 20: Cold Climb
#20 of Plush Love Vol 1
Nathan climbs the hill to home, pondering the evening's events
The wind had died down, so Nathan decided to climb the hill to his home instead of waiting for the trolley. It would have been a free ride, but he thought the fresh air and exercise would help him think. It was only a twenty minute climb and he'd probably get there quicker that way anyhow.
That last glimpse of Luke wistfully looking after him was distressing. What did the kid want? Was it just that he was lonely? Or was there more to it than that?
Nathan had been a little surprised when he found that Luke wasn't sharing a multi-bedroom apartment with classmates. That would have been a lot cheaper than the studio, but maybe he'd had a bad experience in the dorms. For most students that was their first experience in sharing space with strangers.
The way he'd suddenly relaxed when Nathan touched his shoulder meant something, but he wasn't quite sure what. He also wasn't so happy about his own feelings. He'd enjoyed the physical contact way too much, and the sight of Luke when he came out of the bathroom, well. Having such a strong crush on the young man was almost terrifying. It just didn't seem appropriate. If only he weren't so attractive.
Without really noticing, Nathan dodged around some students staggering from one brightly lit bar toward another. They were still celebrating the midterm break and would be cutting their morning classes.
That tiger of his was really cute, too. Nathan had enjoyed running his fingers through its soft white fur and pretending to tickle it. Could it really be a Companion like those described on the PCInc Web site?
But how could that be? The dates on the pages were just wrong. If the years were CE, then they were ten years in the future. But they seemed to have more than twelve months in a year, too. It had to be a hoax. It'd be easy to make tags, sew them into plushes, ship them to random people, and make a Web site to match. But why bother? What was the point?
Whatever their reasons, Luke seemed to be falling for it. He'd been quite unhappy about the idea of damaging the cat by breaking its crystal. That wasn't good. He'd be really depressed if they didn't find anything inside the plush animal.
By now Nathan was a couple of blocks above Collegetown, in a residential area. It was a lot quieter, and a little darker. More than half way home.
Maybe he should try to persuade Luke to bring the cat to his place. It'd be trivial to use his system to measure and weigh the tiger exactly. That'd at least let them know if it was denser than it should be, more than just polyfill and foam rubber. Animating a 3D image of it would be easy, too. Maybe giving Luke something like that'd make up for the cat being just a stuffed animal. If that's all it was.
Nathan shook his head. He kept falling for it too. It was such an attractive idea. But weren't the Asimovian Laws flawed? That first one could be so easily misapplied. He thought he could remember some horror stories about that. Or was it some other author's version of them that went horribly wrong?
There was his house. It really was too big for just one person, but he'd gotten it cheap during the housing bust. And it was convenient to have a separate room for his library. People picked on him for having so many physical books and videos instead of a media server, but he liked to be able to touch them. Some people just didn't understand that.
Sasha was patiently waiting on the couch. He patted him and scratched her ears. Yeah, real Plush Companions would make a lot of people very happy.
He'd tm Luke tomorrow about the change of plans. If he didn't chicken out.