The Significant (22 page)

      
“Things haven’t been the same since you
left.”

      
Kailynn was not sure what Tarah meant,
but it made her concerned. She glanced around the main room, trying to hide her
shaking.

      
“She’s not home, yet,” Tarah said
quietly. “She had a late meeting.”

      
Kailynn was both disappointed and
relieved.

      
“Do you mind if I wait around?” she tried
to ask casually. Tarah’s smile widened.

      
“I was hoping you would.”

      
Tarah got Kailynn a drink and then sat
with her in the living room, asking her what she had been up to, thrilled to
see the older woman again. Kailynn was surprised how easy she found it to talk
to the caretaker. She missed the younger, bubbly girl. Her smile was
infectious.

      
However, when the door opened, Kailynn’s
attention was immediately diverted.

      
She could feel her entire body react to
the Elite when she walked through the door, even though she was talking on the
phone.

      
“—know what else I can do,” she said,
sighing heavily and shaking her head. She stopped when she saw Kailynn. Tarah
stood and dipped her head in a bow to the Golden Elite, but Isa did not notice.
She watched as Kailynn slowly stood from her seat, a nervous smile overtaking
her face.

      
Isa smiled as well.

      
“I’m starting to feel overwhelmed,” she
murmured, placing her fingers against the earpiece to show she was speaking to
someone. “And I think I’m coming down with something.” She paused, listening to
the other person. “Yes, I think that might be best. I’ll work from here
tomorrow and try to rest my body a little. I think Opium is starting to take
its toll.”

      
Kailynn’s heart skipped a beat. She
wondered if Isa was actually feeling unwell, or if she was saying that so that
she could stay at home—with Kailynn—the following day. Kailynn could feel the
heat rising to her cheeks.

      
“Thank you, Remus,” Isa said gently.
“Have a good night.”

      
She took out the earpiece and set it with
her phone on the bar.

      
“This is an unexpected surprise.”

      
Kailynn was still overpowered by how
beautiful Isa was and the radiance of her smile. No matter how many times she
had thought about the Elite’s stunning features the previous month, she was
still enthralled by Isa.

      
“Is there anything I can get you, Miss?”
Tarah asked. She was trying not to smile at the way Isa and Kailynn had not
broken eye contact.

      
“No, thank you, Tarah. I ate at the Syndicate.”

      
Still, Isa and Kailynn had their gazes
locked.

      
“If that is all, Miss, then I will say
goodnight,” Tarah said.

      
“Thank you, Tarah,” Isa repeated.
“Goodnight.”

      
Tarah bowed her head and started toward
her room, allowing the smile to creep over her face when she went into the
guest hall.

      
Kailynn heard the door open to the guest
hall, but she did not turn to make sure that Tarah was gone. As the door was
sliding shut, she strode quickly over to Isa and grabbed her face, crashing
their lips together as if her life depended on it.

      
The Significant backed the Elite up until
she was pressed against the bar, pushing her body against Isa’s, her hands
holding Isa’s face tightly.

      
Isa smiled into the kiss and her hands
went to Kailynn’s waist, holding the younger woman to her, reveling in the
contact.

      
Kailynn’s entire body was sparking as
their lips worked against one another. She felt that she could not get close
enough to Isa. She needed to be closer, she needed to feel every inch of Isa’s
being, even though it was physically impossible. She whined at longing and
broke the kiss.

      
Both of them were still, their lips
barely apart, their breaths mixing between them.

      
Isa’s hand brushed over Kailynn’s cheek.
The Significant leaned into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut.

      
Isa swooped down and captured her mouth
once more.

      
“Isa…”

      
“Hmm?” Isa’s eyes opened and she turned
her head to look at Kailynn. The younger woman hesitated before turning onto
her stomach and crossing her arms to prop herself up on the bed.

      
“Are you staying home tomorrow?”

      
“Yes.”

      
“Is it because you’re not feeling well?”

      
Isa chuckled.

      
“It has more to do with you being here,”
the Elite admitted.

      
Kailynn chuckled nervously, dropping her
gaze to the bed.

      
“That’s unnerving.”

      
“Why?”

      
“Because you’re the leader of a planet
and I’m distracting you from running that planet,” Kailynn said with a wary
chuckle. There was an underlying question in the jest, and Isa immediately
understood. She smiled, running the backs of her fingers tenderly over the
Significant’s shoulder.

      
“I have been trained to run the planet
since I was ten years old,” she whispered. “I am very good at my job.”

      
“I know but…” Kailynn trailed off,
hesitant. “I am still distracting you. And I hear that things are getting worse
with the Ninth Circle.”

      
Isa’s fingers continued trailing over
Kailynn’s skin lazily.

      
“I’m a grown woman,” she said. “You can’t
be held responsible for my actions.”

      
“Then I
am
distracting you.”

      
Isa chuckled, closing her eyes.

      
“You said it yourself when you were here
last,” she started. “If I don’t get my mind off work, I’m going to think myself
in circles.”

      
Kailynn looked over Isa’s relaxed
features. Now that she was studying the Elite, she could see the exhaustion on
her face. She still looked perfect, of course, but the skin around her eyes was
darker and she had lost weight in the month that Kailynn had been gone.

      
The Significant crawled closer, drawing
Isa’s attention and causing her to open her eyes. Kailynn leaned down and
kissed the Elite.

      
“I should probably go.”

      
“I would like you to stay,” Isa murmured,
her eyes betraying how much she wanted Kailynn’s company. “I missed you.”

      
Kailynn’s smile widened.

      
“I missed you, too.”

      
Isa took a deep breath.

      
“I was actually relieved to see you,” she
said. “I was concerned you would not come back.”

      
Kailyn swallowed hard and turned away
from the Elite’s gaze.

      
“I wasn’t sure I was going to come back,”
she admitted. “I wanted to come back much sooner, but…I thought it was too
dangerous for the both of us,” she completed. She looked at Isa seriously.
“What do you think would happen if Venus found out about this?”

      
Isa was quiet for a few moments,
thinking.

      
“I truly do not know.”

      
“Can’t you convince her that you work
better when you’re allowed to fuck every once and a while?” Kailynn groaned.

      
Isa chuckled.

      
“She’s a computer,” she reminded the
Significant. “Her logic is infallible.”

      
“What does that mean?”

      
“That she’s without fault. She is correct,
no matter what she decides.”

      
Kailynn scoffed.

      
“Really?” she groaned. “So, creating
children that she can beat for wanting sex and then forcing them to work
themselves to death while she ignores a growing number of Trids isn’t the
wrong
decision?”

      
“To her, no,” Isa said. “The Elites
garner more respect than she. People like having a person, a living being, to
look to when discussing human problems.”

      
“If that is the case, why is everything
we do so dependent on technology?” Kailynn asked. “If people want someone to
talk to, why don’t they talk to one another? The Significants would disappear
if people would just talk to one another!”

      
“I wish that were so,” Isa murmured. “But
the dependence on technology is so deeply rooted in our society that changing
it would be almost impossible.”

      
“Why?”

      
“It’s extremely complicated,” Isa said.
“If one person wanted to change, wanted to start talking to their husband or
their children, both the husband and the children would have no concept of how
to react. They have never been exposed to those circumstances before. One
person cannot start the change in society just from changing themselves,
particularly if that society is set up to stop them at every attempt.”

      
“Couldn’t you do something?” Kailynn asked.
“I’m sure you heard a while ago that some Trids tried to shut down Venus.”

      
“Yes, I remember.”

      
“Can’t you shut her down?
Can
she be shut down?”

      
Isa hesitated, her eyes looking over
Kailynn’s face, making the Significant nervous. She realized she was discussing
treason with the leader of the planet, but she hoped that Isa would take the
question as Kailynn’s curiosity, rather than plotting.

      
“Yes, she can be shut down,” the Elite
finally murmured. “But it won’t work to just go in there and smash her wiring.
The problem with shutting down Venus lies in the way she was created.”

      
“She’s just like any other computer,
though.”

      
“No, no, she is far from,” Isa said
quickly. “She’s is a very advanced artificial intelligence. She was created as
an early detection disaster program. When the city was being built, there were
fires and earthquakes and violent storms and several other obstacles that
continued to set back development of Tiao. Venus was programmed to detect
dangers and warn the city before the damage was done. However, that required
her to be able to determine when a threat was credible. That artificial
intelligence grew quickly, to the point where she was monitoring transmissions
from other planets and patterning criminal behavior. It was not long before she
was watching every person on the planet. She changed the way the city operated
entirely.”

      
“So why would that matter if she was shut
down?”

      
“Because she was wired into the entire
planet in order to monitor for disasters,” Isa said. “To go in and cut her
wires would do nothing. She is everywhere. Her coding and power source is in
the entirety of the planet. And even then, she has a secondary backup. If she
were to be properly shut down, the entire planet would shut down.
Transportation, power, food production, water treatment, heat…no one would be
able to survive.”

      
“We have none of that in Trid,” Kailynn
noted.

      
“You don’t have power, or heat, this is
true. But you do not treat your water, or produce your food. You steal what you
can from Anon.”

      
Kailynn hesitated, deciding it was best
not to respond.

      
“And this planet, even the undeveloped
parts, is not suitable for producing enough food to feed every inhabitant. That
is why we have ration packs. That is why we have to import food from other planets.”

      
“But, you could shut down Venus and then
find a way to program everything without her,” Kailynn suggested.

      
“We would have no power to reprogram
after she was shut down,” Isa explained. “It would take us years and years to
get the planet up and running again. In that time, the citizens would starve
and die, plague would set in from poor sanitation, wars would break out within
the city…” Isa sighed heavily. “Too many would die if she were to be shut
down.”