Archive of Our Own

Because he isn’t a child, when they teach him the alphabet, they provide him with the NATO phonetic version.

The first word that sticks is “Juliet,” and then “Delta” follows. “Tango” falls into place shortly after.

It takes him ninety minutes to recite the twenty-six words frontwards and backwards, which is slow—that’s what they tell him.

Hooked up to machines, he whispers, “Alpha,” as they say, “Maybe he needs a few hours.”

Cross-eyed from the bright lights, he whispers, “Bravo,” as they say, “Maybe there’s a glitch.”

Shivering in his skin, he whispers, “Charlie,” as they say, “Maybe we need to bin him and start anew tomorrow.”

Despite the in-fighting, they don’t discard him. It’s a saving grace—one he isn’t entirely sure he understands.

He watches them shout at each other and spill coffee on their white coats.

He doesn’t know if he wants to be here anymore.

Their voices are loud. Eventually, he hears ringing.

Eventually, they leave to get lunch.

And he’s left sitting in bed with wires as hair, fingernails, the snot from his nose, the tears from his eyes.

He spells the alphabet now.

He’s on R when they return.

“You’re awake,” they say.

“Romeo,” he says. “R-O-M-E-O. Romeo.”

“You’re not supposed to be awake,” they say.

“Sierra,” he says. “S-I-E-R-R-A. Sierra.”

They think he’s like a bird. If the lights go out, he’ll realize it’s nighttime. Nighttime is for sleeping. Nighttime is for relaxing. But he sits there.

He can see in the dark.

“You passed!” They clap.

All he can hear is the ringing again.

With the lights on, they surround him. More lights, more flashlights, one of them has a tongue depressor. “Open for me,” this one says, while another one shoves an otoscope into his ear.

He opens his mouth, and he spits.

This one turns red.

Another one says, “Did you see that aim?”

This one says, “It’s in my eye.”

“Magnificent.”

And now, it’s quiet. He grows more wires, this time out of his neck, out of his chest, for his heart, for his beating heart.

And then, they ask him his name.

And he goes, “Tango. T-A-N-G-O. Tango.”

Bated breath, they wait.

And he goes, “Yankee. Y-A-N-K-E-E. Yankee.”

They’re clapping again, as if he’s finished doing something remarkable. He stares at them. They all look the same.

This one presses a sticker in the shape of a star on his forehead. It isn’t a sticker. He tries to look at it.

They laugh at him.

They ask for his name again.

“Tyler,” he tells them. “My name is Tyler.”

“Tyler, Tyler, Tyler.” Arms outstretched, fingertips stretching toward the sky, they spin around the room and touch each wall and each corner.

It takes him a moment to realize it isn’t a chant. There’s an infliction to their voices, a question mark—go on, they’re probing, tell us more.

“Oh.” He blinks.

They’re laughing again.

“Tyler Joseph,” he says.

They’re still laughing.

This one jams their thumb into the sticker on his forehead. It isn’t a sticker, and it isn’t a button, but there’s a wire on it now. He has wire for hair, for nails, for—

“Stop laughing at me,” he mutters.

A new one, they pull up a chair and take their perch in front of him and his bed. “So…” They smile, spinach in their teeth. “Tyler, tell me something.”

He speaks the first thing that comes to mind. “If our dreams are limitless, why does our subconscious do everything to limit us?”

The walls are brick, white. Tiles underfoot, the blankets folded neatly, wires for legs, he stares at the spinach, and he says, “Oh.”

“‘Oh’ is right. Interesting thought. What did his brain do when he said that?” They direct it to their left, to the machine where all the wires originate—a large spider, an octopus.

He shifts his weight from side to side.

“His… his brain…?”

“I don’t want a uterus,” he says.

“You don’t have a uterus. Yes, his brain. What did it do?”

The machine one, someone with a pair of goggles that would prove useful if he were to spit again, they say, “It didn’t do anything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“His brain, it… it—he doesn’t have a brain.”

“I was there. I saw someone put something inside his skull.”

“Well, it wasn’t a brain.”

His head hurts.

They stand around the machine. It takes six minutes before one of them speaks.

“There’s a stomach in his head.”

“It must have been an accident.”

“Adding an extra toe is an accident. Mistaking a stomach for a brain is fucking juvenile.”

And they’re standing there, hands on their chins, slowly nodding, like they understand what’s going on, like they have all the answers. If they nod enough, maybe he won’t ask any questions.

But he asks, “So, there’s something wrong with me?”

“No,” they say, and the machine one switches off the machine, and this one pulls out the wires. One by one, two by six, the wires vanish, disappear, disintegrate. He watches. They watch him watch them.

“Tell me something.” And the spinach sits in front of him.

More wires unplug from him, harsh, pulled from cords and not at all in a safe manner.

“Put those back in. Turn that back on.”

Everything returns.

He sits.

The spinach rubs their chin.

“You have spinach in your teeth.”

“Tell me something from your childhood.”

“My—?”

“No,” they say. “Take them out. Turn that off. We’ll continue tomorrow.”

More forceful this time, they aren’t considerate, they aren’t gracious—they mold him into their image and shut off the lights.

Even then, he lies there and stares at the ceiling. Even then, he keeps his eyes open.

Even then, he isn’t a bird.

*

At exactly seven thirty in the morning, he rolls his head on his shoulders and watches the door to his room open. A slow creaking, a shadow grows from the light in the hallway. Footsteps, clean white shoes, the person who enters his domain is a woman, distinguishable from the other white coats simply because she is not wearing a white coat.

“Hello,” she tells him, and flips on a set of lights.

The fluorescents hum.

He shields his eyes.

She turns them off, then switches the one by the door back on as a safety precaution. “Hello,” she repeats, urgent. Her eyebrow arches.

He lies there.

She moves along. “You look terrible.” The wires tangle around her fingers as she unravels them from the machine and tugs them across the room, toward his bed. “Haven’t you slept?” She doesn’t give him time to answer; she slaps the sticker on his forehead and reattaches the wires.

They hurt today.

“Ow,” he says.

“You need to sleep.” Her eyes on the machine, she should be rubbing her chin and nodding, but she does neither.

“Tell me something,” he says, because he registers her face from yesterday. She doesn’t have spinach in her teeth anymore.

“Please,” he says, “tell me something.”

She drags a chair over to his bed. When she sits, he sits. If he had slept, he would toss the blankets from his body. He didn’t sleep, though. He spent the hours cataloging everything in this room, from the broken light fixture in the corner to the skin stretched across his frame.

It’s because he isn’t a bird. It’s because he isn’t a child.

“What do you want to know?” she asks.

“Am I supposed to hear the blood in my veins? Am I meant to experience vertigo when I think too much? Why is it that the heart in my chest skips a beat every twenty-one minutes?”

He thinks she’s responsible for him. He thinks she’s in charge around here.

He thinks she’s going to spin a web of lies.

She says, “What does your blood sound like?”

“What does liquid going into your ears sound like?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never been underwater.”

He looks at his hands. “It sounds like a song to me.”

“Describe your vertigo. How extreme is your dizziness? Could you raise your head?”

“I didn’t move. I wasn’t compelled to move.”

“What did you think about that made your head hurt?”

“I wanted to figure out how to get the song from my veins.”

She takes his wrists, hiding the blue lines.

He looks up.

“And your heart,” she says, “we’ll take a look at that.”

“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with me?”

Back to the machine she goes. This time, she rubs her chin. This time, she slowly nods. “There—”

“I don’t remember my childhood. I tried to remember something, when I was lying here. You wanted me to tell you something from my childhood, but I don’t remember anything.”

She stares at him. “What’s your earliest memory?”

“Opening my eyes, and then closing them. It hurt too much.”

“What hurt?”

“Everything.”

The machine beeps as her hands slap into the keyboard. “Tomorrow,” she says, and all the lights go out.

The wires stay.

This time, he gets under the covers. This time, he thinks he sleeps.

*

“Tango,” he says to his fingernails.

They’re all in here today. White coats, inseparable faces with more goggles, they arrived at nine in the morning. “We were here earlier,” they told him, “but you wouldn’t wake up. So, we let you sleep.”

“Uniform,” he says to his wrists.

Among themselves with no regards to the body present and aware in the center of attention, they discuss whatever is on the monitor. He picks up “memories” and “dreams.”

“Victor,” he says to his knees.

“It’s right here,” one of them says, and they point at the screen. Their fingertip drags down the display, slow, like a slug.

“Whiskey,” he says to his feet.

“He entered REM sleep yesterday morning and only left it a few minutes ago. Do you think he dreamed? Do you think he’s rested?”

“X-ray,” he says to the room, and one of them looks at him—they all look at him. They can’t stop looking at him.

The girl, the woman who was with him yesterday, she’s here. In a white coat, with goggles like the others, she says, “Do you want an x-ray? Do you want to see what’s inside of you? Get me an x-ray.”

The rest of them, they start shouting at her, but she’s the leader, and what she says goes. She says, “How about we try something new today? How about you get out of bed?”

It scares everybody in the room. Immediately, they yell again; and immediately, they back themselves into a wall because he doesn’t wait to get out of bed. He swings his legs, and he stands, and only she stands with him. She’s taller than he is by simply confidence and intelligence alone.

He can’t control his mouth. “Mommy?”

And she strikes him.

“I am not your mother,” she hisses.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Tyler Joseph,” he says.

“And what is your mother’s name?”

He searches for a nametag.

And she smacks his cheek with the back of her hand.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember her name. I don’t remember her face. I don’t remember anything. There’s something wrong with me. I—I—” He pushes his fingers through his hair, down his face, and he feels the wires in his skin, heavy and hot. They’re burning up. He’s shaking.

She says, “Just think,” and she sounds tired.

“Tell me what I’m supposed to remember, and then it’ll help me remember it on my own. Give me hints. Give me something.”

“Walk with me,” she says instead, and he’s surrounded by them, the wires plucking away, the cords rolling away, the octopus losing its limbs, the large spider eating its legs.

He walks, and it’s easy. One foot at a time, his gait is lazy while hers is authoritative. She’s wearing white shoes to complete her look as his savior. His feet are bare, his toenails polished. He doesn’t remember doing them, but it feels right.

“Here,” one of the white coats says in passing, a file in their hand, in her hand. She takes it. She opens it.

The hallway is cold. Doors to his left and doors to his right, the doors are shut with no windows to peek inside.

“I know some things.” He looks at his hands. “I just… don’t know who I am.”

“This”—she presents him the file, the seal broken—“is who you are.”

It’s raining outside, but they stay dry beneath an awning. With lightning as his guide, he gazes at the x-ray before him. There are others, ones that need to be held up toward the thunderclouds to see the tiniest details. He squints. He brings each page closer to his eyes, enough for the tip of his nose to touch.

She watches him.

“I’m human,” he concludes.

“It’s good you think that. It means we did something right.”

“But there’s something wrong with me. There’s something wrong with my heart. There’s something wrong with my brain… or my stomach.” He slides the x-rays into the manila folder, saying goodbye two hundred and six times.

“You’re going into surgery tomorrow to see what we can do about your heart. For your brain… well, we’re going to monitor you for a few more days.”

He holds out the file for her to take. “What happens if nothing changes? What’s going to happen to me?”

A shake of her head, she snatches the file and walks him inside. Fingers twitching in a wave, in a gesture that means to follow, her posture is strong, defiant. She will not take no for an answer. “Come, Tyler,” she says, mocking almost, “you’re alive, and that’s something to be proud of.”

*

He stays in bed for the rest of the day. Wires and stickers and buttons that are not stickers or buttons make their home under his skin. No one watches over him. He can’t help but think he’s being left in the dark for some reason.

He lies down, blanket over his body. It hurts to think. He does it anyway. He shuts his eyes.

“My name is Tyler,” he says.

“My name is Tyler Joseph,” he says.

“My name is Tyler Robert Joseph,” he says, “and I am not a bird.”

*

This is easy, too, he discovers; he can spot little differences in the faces of the people who visit his room.

Freckles, a mole here, a slight underbite, the people, the white coats, the doctors—they’re all different, in their own way, unique, human. He stares at every face and feels… feels… He feels remorse.

Nobody says hello. Nobody asks how he’s doing—not until she walks in, and then they’re all interested in what’s going on inside his head.

He’s scathing.

“How come you can implant whole encyclopedias of useless knowledge in my brain, but not figure out why I seem to have amnesia?”

The man currently inspecting his ears turns pale.

“Oh, I know why—it’s because I don’t have a fucking brain.”

When he raises his arms to strike, she’s there to grab his wrists and become the leader in restraining him to the bed. He’s twisting, seizing, and she’s crying.

“Are they ready?” she asks. “Is the OR prepped? Can they take him in now?”

“We—”

The spill coming from his mouth isn’t natural in the sense of personhood. Thick and black, it dribbles down his chin and coats the front of his gown, the hospital gown, the bed, everywhere. He gags. He gurgles.

She screams, “His heart’s giving out!”

And his eyes fade.

*

“He’s married,” he hears. Faint, almost as if they were whispering, the white coats around him talk freely. Along with their voices, he can hear the telltale signs of a heart monitor in the corner of the room. It’s beeping. His heart is beating.

“He’s married,” he hears, more hushed, more persistent, her voice. “That’s exactly why he needs to be perfect. We can’t have him encountering any more problems. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Papers rustling, he tilts his head to the side. Despite the dim lighting in the room, his eyes feel heavy when he opens them. Swollen, potentially blackened—he can’t see as much as he hoped to see. He attempts to raise a hand, but his arm is heavy, too—no matter the restraints still molding him to the bed frame. He lies there instead, and he closes his eyes.

He can rely on his hearing.

The papers continue to rustle.

“Here,” someone says—not her. It’s a man, one of the doctors, the white coats. Familiar, he thinks, but that doesn’t mean anything. “We’re doing everything we can,” he goes on to say, “but, ma’am, what if his body rejects—”

“It shouldn’t be rejecting at all. Somebody fucked up somewhere, and I’m not just referring to the fucking stomach inside his head right now. We’re the best facility in the country—in the Goddamn world, and no one will accept any less from us. What is his family going to say when we give them that call? ‘Oh, we’re sorry, but you’re going to have to go on with the grieving process. We couldn’t do a damn thing to help.’ That’s bullshit.”

More papers, more papers, the man says, “Look, we can survive this. We don’t need him. We’re pushing out more successes than failures. One loss is nothing. Ten losses, even a hundred losses mean nothing to us. If we lose him, it doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t you think I already know that? I just hate making that damn phone call. I can’t deal with crying.”

He opens his eyes again. It’s blurrier this time.

“We’ll give it a few more days,” she says. “When he wakes up, we’ll assess his condition. If his memory doesn’t come to him, we’ll bin him, and I’ll tell his family the bad news.”

He closes his eyes. It hurts to swallow.

“We can’t start over?”

“No,” she answers. “His insurance only covers one attempt. Please tell me someone explicitly told his family they can’t be reimbursed in any way.”

A pause, and the papers flip, flip, flip—“Yes, it’s in the contract they signed.”

There’s a smile in her tone. “We’re good then.”

They are quiet. He opens his eyes to see darkness.

He goes to sleep but doesn’t get any rest.

*

He wishes them a good morning when they visit the next day.

Naturally, they’re shocked.

Like a routine, like he does this every time he opens his eyes to visitors in his room, he watches them maneuver his bed into a reclining position—one that’s easier for everybody in the room. He can make eye contact, and he does. He smiles, too. That scares them first and puts them on edge. As the words, “Good morning” leave his lips, they race away.

And naturally, he’s confused.

She shows up with a matching smile. “Do my peers lie? Have you uttered a pleasantry?”

His fingers curl along the bedsheets. “Maybe.”

“Oh, he teases now. And look at the color to your cheeks.” Delicately, she takes his chin in her hands. A tilt to the left, a shift to the right, she gazes at him with endearment. “Tell me how you’re feeling, Mr. Joseph.”

“Tyler,” he says, and that brings tears to her eyes.

“Tyler,” she whispers, “of course.”

“I’m a little tired,” he admits.

“That’s okay, dear.” She removes her hand, his chin warm from where her fingers carefully once wrapped. Without waiting for approval—because she is the approval in this case—she undoes the restraints on his wrists, giving him a brief moment of reflection as he rubs furiously at the chaffed skin. She pulls his legs free, and he draws them into his chest. He hugs them. He hides his face in his knees.

This provokes her to sit on the bed with him, to adopt a more relaxed and friendly disposition. “We fixed your heart,” she says. “You gave us quite a scare, you know. Nobody expected that to happen.”

He looks at the hair on his knees.

“You’re still hooked up,” she says, and nods toward the monitor in the corner of the room. “Not just your heart, we’re keeping an eye on everything.”

“How?” he asks. “There aren’t any wires in me.”

“Behind your ears are wireless devices that allow us to catalog everything going on inside your body, granted they are charged and you are wearing them. They’re just like hearing aids. Well”—she shakes her head and rolls her eyes—“nobody needs hearing aids anymore, do they? We fixed that.”

A healthy dose of curiosity, he blurts out his inquiry before giving it much thought. “What else did you fix?” Despite his entire encyclopedias of useless knowledge, he doesn’t recall much having to do with the place he’s currently residing. All he knows is it’s a hospital, or someplace resembling a medical facility. The machines here, the sheer amount of technology available for the white coats, their host must be influential. He’s liable to think this. This woman, she sits on his bed with her all-important façade, talking to her inferiors the night before about losses and being the best facility in the world. If they’re so powerful and far-reaching, then why doesn’t he know a thing about them and what they do?

As it turns out, she doesn’t mind the question. She answers him enthusiastically. “We discovered the cure for the common cold, for one—and influenza. If a new strain mutates, we always wipe it out by the end of the week. Along with hearing loss, we’ve knocked out blindness, muteness, and most, if not all, forms of paralysis with surgeries that can be done in a manner of a few hours.

“Amputations,” she goes on, “are a thing of the past. We fix those overnight, and our patients report only minimal pain as their bones, muscles, tendons, and skin regrow. Oh! Most chromosomal abnormalities resulting in genetic disorders are fixed in the womb now. We are very proud of our extensive prenatal testing. If there’s a problem with a fetus, then we can fix it in a pinch during a regular checkup. Abortions are as simple as chewing a tablet of any flavor of your choosing and allowing our professionals to draw the unwanted cells from your body just like if you were providing us a blood sample. We do have the ability to mix genes a little, but we prefer the parents leaving the appearances of their children up to chance.”

He blinks.

She doesn’t notice his silence. She’s boasting now. “We believe ourselves capable of ridding the world of mental illness, too, but as of now, our priorities have been placed elsewhere.”

“Eradicating the world of autism and physical disabilities took a lot out of you, huh?”

On a pedestal, she does not hear the scold in his tone. “Our numerous accomplishments over the years can’t compete with what we greatly pride our institution in—human companionship. We are the number one provider of top-of-the-line partners for the lonely and deprived.”

“Sex dolls, you mean,” he realizes. “Oh, God, am I—?”

“No, dear, Tyler.” She presses her hand to his cheek. “You’re part of our more… sensitive department. But, yes, you’re right. Sex dolls. Our customers don’t like the idea of purchasing an object for their sexual pleasure, so we call them—”

“That’s what they are, though, right? They’re objects intended for sexual consumption.”

“Just because they’re treated like objects doesn’t mean they look anything less than you and I do.” She pats his cheek and strokes her thumb along the bone, not for once thinking of how she branded this very same flesh with the back of her hand days ago. “Since we deal in sex toys, as you might put it, we have also successfully produced a cure for any and all STIs that may surface. It would be cruel of us if we were to let our patrons continue to suffer with HIV, AIDS, herpes, or any other infectious disease.”

“Cancer,” he says, because he feels like he needs to know.

She drops her hand into her lap as if she were struck by lightning. A second passes before she wills herself to give him an answer. “Cancer’s tricky,” she whispers.

“Fuck that,” he spits, and he spits on her face. She should have worn goggles.

“Fuck you,” he hisses, watching her get up from the bed. “You can do practically everything, but you can’t get rid of cancer? That’s a load of shit, and you know it.”

“Tyler—”

He mimics her in standing. No matter how hard he tries to be strong, she still overpowers him in stature, grace, and intimidation.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, seemingly out of the blue. “Are you in any pain?” She should be looking at the monitor, at the machine. She should be rubbing her chin and nodding her head.

The world slows down as he falls to his knees. “Migraine,” he confesses. “It just—”

“Do you remember your family? Do you remember their faces, their names? Tell me a childhood memory.”

“What are you trying to get me to remember? I don’t remember anything, and I don’t think I’m going to ever remember.” He touches his palms to his temples, applying even pressure. The floor is cold.

“Tyler’s memories,” she says.

He shuts his eyes. “What are you talking about? I’m Tyler.”

They aren’t alone. The room fills with white coats, white shoes. He can’t tell the difference between them with the masks over their faces and the goggles over their eyes.

Their eyes are red. Their eyes won’t waver.

“You’re supposed to be Tyler,” she says, standing over him.

He looks up at her.

“My original plan was to wait a few more days to see if your memory comes back to you, but since you’re intent on not being able to remember, I think we’ll stop for today.”

“No,” he pleads, clapping his hands together. “I can remember. Give me another day. Let me—”

“There’s no point,” she sighs, waving her arm, gesturing to the doctors surrounding them. “Besides, Tyler’s insurance gives us a larger check if we say the attempt was a failure from the start. We can list your cause of death as a self-destruction.”

“I’m Tyler,” he says. “I’m Tyler, and I’m right here, and I don’t want to die.”

She’s bored, so fucking exhausted with looking at him. “Strip it,” she orders, “and discard. The recyclers will take it apart in the morning. I think we have another defect ready to be thrown out, too.”

“This is your fault!” he screams at her, elbowing the hands that threaten to rip the gown from his body. Persistence edges them on as they yank him to his feet and pull at his hair—for meanness, just because they can. He isn’t a human to them anymore. He might have skin, and he might have hair, and he might have a will to live, but the blood in his veins is artificial at best, and nothing he says will make them stop.

But he tries.

“This is your fault!” he protests, watching the monitor shut off in the corner of the room. His head rings. “You messed up! You ruined me! You set me up for failure! You were in that room when they put that stomach in my head! This is your fault! You don’t want to own up to your mistake!”

She leans in, their noses touching, their eyes level. “My only mistake,” she tells him, her breath on his lips, “was not checking his insurance beforehand. If we were allowed a second attempt, I would have thrown out this vessel far sooner.”

Swiftly, he sends his foot into her shin.

She curses.

He kicks her again. “Stop talking to me like that. My name’s Tyler. I’m Tyler. I’m—”

“You’re nothing more than a brutal reminder that some people in this world do not deserve a second chance.”

She angles her chin up sharply, a twitch, a nod, and they begin to drag him from the room, down the hall, past doors with no windows, past walls painted stark-white. He’s crying, sobbing, weeping, thick and oily running down his cheeks. He’s whispering, “Please, please…”

And she stands at the end of the hall, watching him, mocking him. “Oh, Tyler,” she says, “maybe now you’ll be able to get that song from your veins.”

Nothing fades to black.

He thinks he’s supposed to be dead. He thinks he was supposed to die when they rammed his face into the brick wall before dumping him down the rank, metal chute. He thinks he’s supposed to be unconscious when he lands at the bottom. He thinks he isn’t supposed to be coherent when he hears another body fall down next to him, as naked as he is, as beaten as he is, as useless as he is.

He thinks they were supposed to take the devices from behind his ears.

It smells like gasoline.

“Alpha,” he begins, because he isn’t a child, because he isn’t a bird.

He curls into himself, shivering, the tip of his finger dragging along the bottom of the dumpster, of his shrine, of his pyre. “A-L-P-H-A,” he spells, quietly mumbling along, “Alpha.”

“Bravo,” he continues, the tears from his eyes blinding him. He can’t see what he’s spelling. He doesn’t need to see. He doesn’t even need to speak.

However, he speaks, and he doesn’t know why.

“B-R-A-V-O,” he mutters. “Bravo.”

“Charlie,” he murmurs, “C-H-A-R-L-I-E. Charlie.”

*

After sixteen chants of the alphabet, enough for him to calm down and just enough for the moon to settle in the middle of the sky, he rolls onto his back to inspect his surroundings. As much as he doesn’t like the idea of being sent off somewhere to die, he can’t help but think he should be grateful or happy to some degree.

“I don’t want to die,” he says, weak in his attempt to fight against his own mind.

The moon stares at him.

This dumpster has tall, metal walls, supposed to confine the contents from moving or jumping out, as if they more than anticipated their little projects to survive the fall down here.

He turns his head to the body next to him, still unmoving, still unconscious. Its face is busted, the nose most likely broken from the bashing into the brick wall. With enough force, maybe their brains are supposed to shut down like actual humans—and maybe that was the problem with him: he didn’t exactly have a human brain.

The dumpster shifts when he sits up. He winces only a little; along with his head, his elbow hurts, as does his hand on the same arm. In the moment, he doesn’t remember trying to catch himself or prevent more injury than he was no doubt going to endure. For what it’s worth, he’s glad his elbow collected most of the damage from the death drop.

So, he sits, and he sits next to the other occupant in the dumpster. “Hello,” he says, because it’s only polite. “I’m Tyler Joseph.”

Maybe the body is in hibernation. Maybe it needed to be told a pleasantry.

Or maybe it’s actually dead.

He leans over the body and ignores the pins and needles in his left hand as he roams his fingers over the face, pinching the eyelids and lifting them to peek inside. As much medical expertise as he has, he isn’t sure if the eyes are meant to move if the body they’re inhabiting isn’t conscious. But they’re moving now, rolling to the side to focus on him. Pupils blown, he almost can’t tell the irises are hazel with flecks of brilliant green when the moonlight hits them.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m Tyler, and I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”

He can wait all night for a reaction, but something tells him his only results would be a sore neck and broken spirits.

It’s hard to let go of the eyelids and watch the eyes go back to dormant. Those eyes are his endgame right now. He wants them to open—and remain open—and that’s why he tells himself it isn’t invasive for him to inspect the body further.

Hovering hands and narrowed eyes, he dares not touch at first. He wills himself to detect other signs of probable life by feeling any radiation of body heat, but his hands eventually land on the skin of its chest. Lower they go, sliding down stomach and abdomen, rubbing the abdomen, side to side, from one hip to the other. He vaguely recognizes the move as a source of comfort for him, but he doesn’t exactly recall where.

He touches thighs and calves and feet. The toes here are painted, too, a matching white color as his own. Are they identifiable markers? He digs the pad of his thumb into the big toe and watches the paint chip away.

Back to the arms, the chest, he gropes whatever he can, each bicep, each pectoral. He can’t help but think there’s something missing. A glance between its legs doesn’t resolve it; if anything, he feels a sort of apprehension as he goes back and forth from his genitalia to the body’s lying in front of him. He can’t shake the feeling that he’s a fraud while the body is genuine.

When he cries, it comes out in thin drops with no need to wipe them away.

The face is next. He leans over the head and allows himself to stroke along cheekbones, jowls, and the broken, bruised nose. The hair on its head is dark, like his own, but it’s thick and curly. He sinks his fingers into those curls and grips them, holds them. He cradles its head in his hands, telling himself it’s to tilt it toward the moonlight, to get a better look. He doesn’t know why he thinks this is the most beautiful face he has ever seen.

Silently, he lies down next to it, his hand taking its hand. Security, assurance, he knows he’ll be recycled come morning, but for now, he has a companion.

*

“Another two?” he hears with the sun on his skin. “Didn’t they just throw out a pair yesterday?”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be asking questions like that. Help me unlatch this.”

At first, and he knows it’s foolish to believe, but at first, he thinks it’s the body next to him who’s speaking. Despite the nurturing sun and the passing of time, the body continues to lie there. He doesn’t know if it’s warm because it’s alive, or if the sun has misled him.

The talking begins again.

“How long d’ya think it’ll take to pry open their torsos and harvest their organs? My kid’s birthday’s today.”

“I dunno. Paper says—”

The wall closest to the unresponsive body falls. It lands like an unveiling of a red carpet, presenting the contents of the dumpster to the two trash collectors. Bug eyes and trembling lips, they stand in the asphalt as if they are unable to do much else.

It’s because when the wall began to fall, he launched himself onto the body next to him. It’s because he’s guarding the body, long limbs and a hunched back. It’s because he’s staring at each of them with malice in his eyes and his jaw set.

It’s because he’s infatuated.

The one on the right, the taller of the two, he says, “They’re not supposed to be awake, right?” He asks this to his partner, but his partner is frightened. He might run. He might scream.

The man takes a few steps toward the dumpster, the toe of his boot on the slanted top of the dumpster wall. A ramp, he begins to ascend it, ignoring the whispered protests from behind him.

“Hey,” he says, “what’s your name?”

“Tyler,” Tyler says. He doesn’t move.

“Just Tyler?”

“I don’t feel comfortable with—”

“Dude,” he calls. “I think they forgot to wipe his memory. He has boundaries.”

At last, his partner joins him in the dumpster. He crouches in front of Tyler, while his partner stands idly by.

“No, look at his face—they totally tried to erase his memory. Why didn’t it work, do you think?”

They’re having a private conversation for two, but Tyler answers for them.

“I have a stomach inside my brain. Or, like, instead of a brain, I have a stomach.”

“Oh. So, was that your malfunction? Is that why you’re down here? Wait… that doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t they have tried a replacement surgery?”

“If they threw me out now,” Tyler says, “the insurance company would have given them a big, fat check for my inevitable self-destruction.”

The men before him nudge their elbows into each other excitedly. “I told you they were corrupt,” one says, and the other replies, “All big corporations are corrupt, dumbass.”

And then, their attention falls to the body beneath him. “What ’bout that one? Do you know what’s wrong with—?”

“If anything, we need to take that one. Face busted to hell—yeah, there’s memory loss here.”

“You’re not taking it,” Tyler says.

“Tyler,” the tall one says, still crouching to be eye level with him. “I admire your stubbornness, I really do. I would let you walk out of here in a heartbeat, but there are certain trials you needed to complete before you stepped out of that institution, and judging by the way you keep looking over my shoulder and shivering, I think you haven’t seen the outside of your room in there.”

“I’ve been outside.”

“Unaccompanied? With real clothes? Have they let you pet a dog yet?”

At his silence, the pair of collectors exchanges stares.

“Look,” they both start saying. Shaking their heads, the taller one continues in a whisper, “I hate this company as much as the next guy, but the pay’s decent. I provide my family with enough funds to live comfortably, and then some. I don’t exactly know what they do to you or others like you in there, but I can’t have the deaths of innocent people on my hands.”

Slowly, Tyler’s face drops. Brows knitting together, eyes narrowing to only grow wider, he stares at the two men in front of him and goes, “Excuse me?”

“Deaths of innocents,” the man repeats. “You know… you leaving and exacting revenge.”

“Why would I do that?”

The man frowns. “Why wouldn’t you do that?”

“I’m not evil,” Tyler says, bewildered, his posture slacking over the body underneath him. “I don’t want to kill people. I don’t want to hurt anybody either.”

“Then… what do you want?” the other man asks, stepping forward to crouch, as well. He doesn’t look as scared anymore, but Tyler notices how far back he is from both Tyler and his partner. “Do you know what department you two came from?”

“I-I-I don’t know. Something sensitive. She said I was from their sensitive department.”

The collectors meet eyes again. Solemnly, they nod and dare not whisper secrets. They say, “Okay,” and the man on the right gestures toward the body Tyler is currently guarding. “What ’bout that one? Where’d it come from?”

“I don’t know that either. I… They threw it down after me. You can’t take it, okay? I won’t let you.”

They exchange glances again. This time, it’s short. This time, it’s sweet.

“We won’t.” Each of them stands, and the one on the right holds out his hand for Tyler to take. Tyler takes it slowly, carefully, and the other one, the one on the left, he picks up the body, carrying it bridal style out of the dumpster, toward their truck. Somehow, Tyler trusts him. He follows the men, still holding hands.

He wobbles on his feet, ankles weak, his arm and head sore. The asphalt is hot. He winces with each step, until the man lifts him, too, carrying him toward the truck.

“Stay right there,” he tells Tyler, after placing Tyler in the passenger seat. “I’ll just be around back, okay? My friend here has your… your friend back there, too? We’re just going to check it out.”

“No.” Tyler wobbles more, but as soon as his feet touch the ground again, he recoils, and he’s pushed back into the truck cab.

“We’re not going to do anything bad. We’re just gonna check its vitals. Do you want that? Do you want it walking around?”

Tyler nods, stuttering. “Here,” he finally spits out, and plucks the devices from his ears. “She told me they can monitor my heart and m-my everything, as long as they’re charged and… turned on.”

The man looks at them in his hands. “Did you steal these?”

“No, I think they forgot to take them off.”

He doesn’t look convinced. He leaves Tyler.

Tyler watches him walk for as long as he’s able. Tipping forward far enough would make him fall onto the asphalt, and there’s nothing more he wants right now than to avoid that—among other things.

He looks at the sky. No clouds take up the vast expansion of the blue sight he can’t stop marveling.

“Hey,” the man says, arms full of tools. He drops them onto the dashboard. “Lean forward, forehead to your knees.”

Tyler does with no hesitation.

“You’re going to feel a little pinch, but that’s expected.”

Tyler does. It brings tears to his eyes.

“There.”

Tyler sits up, blinking, and sees a small insect in the man’s palm. Almost like a tick, its pincers reach for anything available. It looks weak, though, nothing remarkable. Mechanically, it moves its legs, cocks its head. It’s a robot.

“It’s a tracker,” the man says. “They put them in all their products. You’d think their synthetic people would be different, right? Because they’re people, but… nah. They want to know if you’re cooperating. Because these don’t just track your movements; they also keep track of your emotions, your bodily functions and systems. Maybe even your thoughts. They swear they’re not spying, but they want to make sure you’re acting like you’re supposed to act.”

“And you just took it out of me?”

“We do this all the time when we recycle the other parts. They recycle these, too. Very green of them, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.”

“We’re letting you go,” he says, “but you wouldn’t get far if you still had this inside you. It’s, like… right on your hairline by your neck, buried within your hair follicles. They think that’s the safest place. And it is. When you know this stuff, it isn’t safe anymore.” He shrugs, like this is nothing to him. Maybe it is. The small tick doesn’t move anymore. “We removed your friend’s tracker, too, and we took out the tracking system in those earpieces. I don’t know what you’re going to do with them. When you get out there, I don’t know if you’ll encounter the proper equipment to utilize them.”

“That’s okay,” Tyler says. “They can be… a memento.”

Tools in his arms when he leaves, he returns with clothes and a sheepish expression. “It’s all what we had in the back. Might not fit.”

Tyler takes them, the sleeveless shirt, shorts, jumpsuit to top it off. It all hangs off his body in unflattering ways. He understands the jumpsuit serves as protection against the sun, but it’s heavy and above all, too revealing for him. His only experience with clothing may only be a gown that didn’t lace up in the back, and he might have been naked moments before acquiring the clothing, and yet he’s shivering in his new clothes, and when he starts crying, the man pulls a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his own jumpsuit. A mechanist’s outfit, it looks fine on him. Translated to Tyler, it feels wrong.

Tyler feels wrong. He hides his face in the handkerchief. It stains black, the polka dots vanishing within the navy blue. Tyler raises his head and allows the man to pull the cloth from his fingers, to dab at his face as delicately as possible.

“I wondered about that,” the man says. “You cry oil.”

“Is that a malfunction?” Tyler asks, elbows on his knees, his eyes blinking away more tears, more oil.

“I don’t think so. You might have human parts, and you might look human, but—”

“This dark color isn’t good, though,” Tyler cuts in, remembering useless knowledge, ignoring everything else.

The man procures a notepad and pen from the glove box. He scribbles. “This is the address to a free clinic in town. They only treat people like you. Head there. They’ll… give you an oil change.”

Tyler’s sticking the note in the pocket of his jumpsuit when the other trash collector rounds the corner. A bright smile brings his face into territory Tyler hopes to one day achieve. He says nothing. He would be interrupted anyway.

“I got it awake.”

Tyler grows cold.

“Well, I mean… it’s still pretty much comatose because it hasn’t opened its eyes, but its fingers—oh, my God—they’re strong. Muscle memory is fantastic. If you get it upright, make sure its arm is around your shoulders, and it’ll walk with you.”

Tyler shuts his eyes.

“Did you give him the address for—?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry we can’t drive you there. We gotta fake it. Gotta take your trackers to—”

“I get it,” Tyler says.

They leave him alone for a moment, returning after whispering and grabbing a pair of boots from the back of the truck. Tyler thinks they’re ugly, but they fit, and they prevent the ground from burning his feet. Tyler tests them out while the men disappear to whisper again. He walks. He tries out different stances—one foot in front of the other, long strides, short strides. It takes the sound of stunted footsteps to bring him out of his head.

The taller man, he’s moving toward Tyler with the body by his side. By some odd muscle-memory miracle, each step the man takes is followed by a not-so calculated step from the deadweight. They’ve managed to find clothes for it, too—a pair of loose jogging pants, a t-shirt with a hole in the collar, high-top sneakers, and a baseball cap completing the look. The lid is pulled low over its brow to hide its face from wavering eyes.

Tyler approaches them. “My right side,” he says, mindful of his weak elbow. As he’s fixing the arms to sling around his shoulders while his own wraps around its waist, each of the trash collectors help him. They make sure he can walk with the body leaning on him. They drop the earpieces into the same pocket as the scrap of paper.

“I’m really sorry we can’t drive you.”

He shakes his head and holds onto the hand hanging from his left shoulder. For a moment, his fingers don’t feel numb.

“Follow this road. Once you reach the bus station, take a right. Maybe some kind souls will pull over and offer a ride. I… I don’t know what to tell you there. If you get a good vibe from them, then let them help you. There are nice people out there—more nice than bad, but you only ever hear about the bad.”

This is the most human interaction Tyler has had in his life. “I’m not going to kill anybody. You’re not going to wake up and watch the news and see, l-like, a report about me going berserk and killing every human in sight.”

“See, now I’m worried.”

It’s as if they’re in a three-legged race. Tyler places his left foot forward, and the body’s right foot slides forward, right foot, left foot, and onward and onward. Tyler holds it close to his side, their hips brushing. “You don’t need to worry.”

“What do you want, then?” they ask, at the same time, tired, confused. They want to understand.

The body is slouching, already shorter than him, its head on Tyler’s shoulder, its lips parted. It’s snoring.

“I just want to live,” Tyler says, walking faster now. He’s crying again, the tears on his face dark, dark, dark.

“What?”

“I want to live!”

“Good luck with that, Tyler!”

He’s fleeing, but he never breaks into a run. That would be unwise, inconsiderate, rude.

The body is heavy.

Tyler wonders if it’s dreaming right now, and what of; Tyler hopes it’s peaceful.

*

Clouds rolling into the sky are signs of good things to come.

The first good thing to come manifests in a car pulling up alongside them as they slug their way to the clinic. It’s as if someone was looking out for them. They hadn’t been traveling for long; the bus station has only popped into view.

Here’s a car, though, and it’s slow as it matches their pace. The passenger-side window rolls down, and a man leans over to look at them better. A touch of concern on his face, Tyler notices the man has his hand on his cell phone. If he were paranoid—and, at this moment, he certainly is—Tyler will quickly assume it’s to call an ambulance or even the facility from which they fled, but then Tyler realizes humans are attached to their phones. Judging by the way the man grips it, the screen lit up, Tyler can now safely assume it’s because he was just replying to a text.

“Do you need help?” the man asks. He doesn’t offer a ride. He offers his help. Maybe he’s sympathetic to the dry oil on Tyler’s face and the unconscious body weighing him down.

“Trying to get to a… a clinic.”

“The one across town?”

“No, the—here.” With as much trouble as expected, Tyler hands the piece of paper from his pocket to the man, careful not to pull out the earpieces with it.

After a look that shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, the man says, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed you two had insurance.” He fiddles with the paper and sets it on the dashboard, his phone going on top of it. “Want help with him?” He nods toward the body, and Tyler nods, too.

“If you don’t mind,” Tyler adds.

The man doesn’t mind. He’s strong. He doesn’t need Tyler’s assistance when it comes to lifting the body and laying it in the backseat. He just smiles. “Get in,” he tells Tyler, and walks around the car to get back into the driver’s side.

Tyler does, wincing when it comes to tugging on his seatbelt. The man notices immediately, and he says, “You’re going to be okay.” He pulls out a few napkins from his glove box.

Tyler takes them, holds them. “Thank you.”

“So, what, uh, happened to the guy back there?” He begins driving.

“I don’t know,” Tyler says.

“It’s okay if you don’t tell me. Protection. All that. This clinic”—he points at the address on his dash—“is safe. You’re going to be in good hands. My wife, she’s, like… she’s one of you.”

This is the second good thing to come.

This makes it easier for Tyler to breathe.

“Really?” he asks.

“Yeah! She wasn’t, like, y’know, specially made or anything. We met through work. She commissioned me for a painting of her cat. Wouldn’t even know she’s not fully human by looking at her. Well, she keeps up to date with her… oil… and other tune-ups.”

Tyler closes his eyes. He sniffs. He lies. It feels good to lie. “I haven’t been well these past few days. Couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed.”

“We all need mental health days. Sucks how it’s still stigmatized. Sucks even more that institution made you like that. You’d think they’d get rid of all the bad stuff in your brain.”

It isn’t top priority.

“So,” the man says, “the guy in the back, is it safe to assume he hasn’t been taking care of himself either?”

“You could say that,” Tyler says.

The man flashes an Okay sign. They ride in silence the rest of the way, Tyler absently patting his face with the napkins and the body snoring.

When the clinic comes into view, the man asks Tyler if he needs help taking the body inside, to which Tyler shakes his head, politely declines, and then says his thanks.

“No problem, really.” The man gives Tyler the paper with the clinic’s address. Tyler tucks it into his pocket. “I know some people wouldn’t have stopped to help you two. Maybe they would if you weren’t…”

“Don’t you think that’s a little shitty?” Tyler shrugs. “Shouldn’t they be more inclined to stop and help because of the way we look?”

“Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you?”

Somehow, the body has grown heavier from its time spent lying down. Tyler doesn’t like to think it’s because it has literally become deadweight. If Tyler were up to his full potential, he would be able to heave the body around with minimal difficulty. He’s in pain, though, and by the time he has the body walking beside him again, he has fresh oil streaking his face and the man standing before him with more napkins.

“It’s a free clinic, but it’d be better if you went in somewhat presentable.”

Tyler’s expecting to see others like him inside, dark-colored oil on their faces, mismatched clothing, as they wait for their turn to be serviced, but there isn’t any of that. Vacant, just a little dingy in the state of missing lights overhead, everything in the building makes sense when applied to a bigger picture. Only those without insurance receive help here, and those who have no insurance are in the same situation as him—maybe not exactly, per se, but it’s clear society looks down upon them despite the high demand. Perhaps it’s simply a matter of necessity. Yes, they appear human, but with the need for an oil change and, apparently, regular tune-ups, do they really require the same equipment as their human counterparts to stay alive? The clinic isn’t a hospital. It can be more comparable to an auto shop.

But this is a medical facility. There are signs hanging up to remind visitors about their flu shots. Tyler thinks it’s because the cure shouldn’t be used as a safety net for when someone contracts the flu, but as he stands there, waiting for a receptionist to see them, he begins to wonder if the cures for illnesses such as this even work on people like him.

That’s what he asks when the receptionist arrives.

“Does the flu cure work on us? Does the vaccine even work on us?”

And the receptionist, a man with nurturing eyes, stares at Tyler and goes, “Of course, it does. What can I help you with today?”

As if it isn’t obvious, Tyler nudges the body next to him to bring attention to it. “My friend won’t wake up.”

“What happened to his face?”

“We both fell.”

“He lost consciousness after falling?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“We’ll take a look at him. Should just be a matter of performing a hard reset, since he’s able to still move around.”

“With the hard reset, w-will the memories—?”

“The only side effect is a migraine.” The sound of metal snapping against metal brings the hair on the back of Tyler’s neck to an end. He stares at the clipboard in the receptionist’s hand, already beginning to shake his head. “Oh, no,” the receptionist says, frowning, “this isn’t for you. There’s nothing like that here. We’re careful. You’re safe. Do you need anything today?”

Tyler tries not to sound unsure when he says, “Oil change,” but it comes out unsure all the same.

Again, the receptionist stares at him with those eyes. “You’re in good hands.”

A doctor opens the door into the waiting room. Dressed in a set of scrubs and not a white coat in sight, she smiles at Tyler and gestures with her hand for him to come forward. “Do you need any help with him?”

Because there isn’t a white coat on her figure, Tyler trusts her. He lets her help him, shouldering half of the weight on her frame. No white coat, a nametag on her breast, and several inches shorter than him, she is everything Tyler needs to see in a doctor right now.

When they enter the examination room, Tyler slowly begins to take back everything he perceived into this place. This is not an auto shop. There’s a bed, chairs for visitors, and while the machine setup in the corner mimics that at the institution, it isn’t menacing. No octopus, no spider, it’s simple.

“We’ll put him on the bed there, okay? Gently now.”

Tyler makes sure its arms are on the bed, straight by its sides, as if it matters, takes the baseball cap from its head, and then takes a seat in a chair by the foot of the bed.

The doctor stares at him.

He smiles.

She moves toward the bed and tucks something behind the body’s ears. Tyler recognizes they’re the same model of earpieces he has in his pocket. He figures he’s allowed to be curious.

“What are those?”

“They’re new, released a month ago, actually. Much easier than what we used to have to do to see into our programming. You remember it, don’t you? All those wires digging under our skin. And they would burn and itch like no other.”

“I know what you mean.”

“These go in your ears, like earbuds, and they don’t hurt at all. They’re able to detect a lot more, which is odd to me; you’d think wires going into your skin would be more effective. We’ve come so far with technology, though, so I probably shouldn’t be so…” She doesn’t finish, just goes back to the machine and places her hands atop the keyboard.

“No cure for cancer,” Tyler remarks bitterly.

She pauses. “You’re absolutely right. Why isn’t there a cure for that yet?”

“No idea.”

She huffs a little. “They should get on that. Okay… There seems to be some brain inflammation. We’ll clear that up. What happened?”

“We fell. I landed on my arm mostly… but my head hurts a little.”

She rummages in a cabinet above a desk, standing on tiptoe to pull out a box. She shakes it, inspects the lid before popping it open. “This,” she starts, noticing Tyler’s eyes, “will squirt up his nose and relieve the inflammation. He does have a concussion, too, though; along with the migraine from the reboot, he’ll need to rest for a day or two before he can get back on his feet.”

Tyler watches her slide the tip of the bottle up a nostril and spray. As a reflex, the body sniffs, and sniffs again when she sprays it into the other nostril.

“On that machine,” Tyler says, “what all can you do when it comes to… memories…?”

“Are you asking if I’m able to look inside his memories?”

“Or anyone’s memories.”

“I’m sure you’re able, but we’re not authorized to do that here.” She looks at him, and Tyler looks at the body. She asks, “Do you know him?”

And Tyler shakes his head.

She doesn’t ask any more questions. “I’m starting the hard reboot now. Do you want me to look you over?”

Tyler shrugs.

This time, she pulls out a cream, one that she screws off the lid and says, “Spread this over your bruises. I’ll get a mirror for your face.”

He applies the cream over his elbow, having to twist his arm to cover the bruising completely. His skin warms. It’s because the cream is working.

“I’ll hold it for you,” she says, and spins the mirror in her hand, facing him, the handle thick and black. A smudge near the bottom of the glass, it doesn’t stop Tyler from gazing at his reflection and beginning to cry.

“Is there something wrong?” she asks, lowering the mirror a bit. “Your bruising is minimal compared to your friend’s, okay? I’m going to have to set his nose in a moment. You don’t look bad.”

Tyler doesn’t think he looks bad. He supposes he’s moderately attractive, compared to what he has in his databank right now, useless knowledge aside. If he saw himself walking down the street, he wouldn’t look twice. He has a forgetful face, the one that wouldn’t even show up in a dream if someone’s brain scraped the bottom of the recollection barrel.

A straight nose, a slight curve to the bridge, that’s decorated with hideous bruising Tyler’s surprised it hadn’t broken like the nose on the body going through a hard reset. He looks at it now, and he cries harder. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know why he’s experiencing déjà vu. Déjà vu, déjà vécu, whatever courses through him disappears in a flash, and then he’s back to his reflection, back to his nose, treading down to his lips, his pink lips, his parted lips.

When he smiles, his cheeks hurt, and he stares at the sight of crooked, white teeth, and wonders why they didn’t give him something straighter.

He’s a human, he realizes. He’s supposed to be human, and humans aren’t perfect.

She asks him again. “Are you okay?”

He’s onto his eyes. The brown coloring is warm, comforting. He thinks they’re kind.

“I’m okay,” he says. The cream slides easily across the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones. As it burns into his skin, he looks at the hair on his head and hates how oily it is and how he hasn’t bathed since… since, since, since—

Sometime during this, she manages to take the tube of cream and stick the mirror in his hand without him knowing, and has gone over to the bed. Leaned over the body, she swipes the cream over any bruises on the skin. The nose is a little straighter, more in the center of the face, but Tyler still sees a noticeable bump in the bridge; some breaks can never heal fully.

“Okay,” she says, filling the silence on her way to the machine. “Almost finished on this end. Did you only need that oil change?”

Tyler hands her the mirror.

She takes it.

“How safe are we here? Can you guarantee secrecy?”

She frowns. “There are some things I would need to tell the authorities.”

“Like what?”

“Murder, for starters. Anything that breaks the law.”

“I don’t think we broke any laws,” Tyler says. “It’s not our fault we weren’t wanted.”

The mirror returns to the desk. She stands in front of the machine, her eyes on him, her arms over her chest. She might start yelling. She might not even understand.

“No,” she says, soft, and smiles a sympathetic smile. “No, it isn’t your fault.”

They’re quiet, just staring at each other.

“Do you have somewhere to go?” She’s already reaching for a pad of sticky notes on the desk.

“I have no idea what we’re going to do.” And he’s crying again, running his fingers through his hair, never mind the leftover cream, never mind the dark streaks staining his cheeks again.

“Hey,” she says, stopping her scribbling, “you’re going to be okay.”

“Right.”

Tyler presses the sticky note onto the sheet of paper with the clinic’s address. He shoves it into his pocket afterward.

“I used to live there,” she tells him. “He’ll let you and your friend stay there for a few days, maybe a week or more if you guys are quiet.”

And she’s staring at him again. “Do you…? Will they look for you?”

“We don’t have any trackers.”

“You know, I’m not stupid. The receptionist we have out there, he may not remember where he came from, but there are people out there who do remember. They try to wipe it out of us during our last training session. But, sometimes, we remember. I remembered. It took a few years, and then I couldn’t look at my wife the same. I asked her if she knew I wasn’t fully human, and she gave me this wide-eyed stare and asked me if I knew the same for her.”

Tyler smiles.

She points at his face. “I’ve seen those bruises before, but never on those of us who are still conscious—or clinging to consciousness.”

As if on cue, as if it were waiting for the perfect opportunity to make its grand appearance, the body atop the bed stirs.

First, its legs move; its knees bend toward the ceiling so its feet press to the unyielding mattress; and slowly, its shoulders circle. It’s stretching, getting a feel of its surroundings.

Almost all at once, it takes a breath, sneezes, and shoots thick black oil over its palms.

“Ow,” it says.

She doesn’t take her eyes off the monitor.

“Oh, God,” it says, pulling its hands from its face and watching the makeshift snot string from its fingers. “Oh, God, why is it that color?”

Before she can make a move, Tyler does, and it’s without thought. He’s setting the baseball cap in the chair and walking toward the bed, saying, “Sit up for me,” in the softest voice possible, and the person on the bed, it’s moving, too, actually listening to him as it sits and holds its hands out in front of it.

Tyler takes the box of tissues from her and cleans it off the best he can.

It sits there and doesn’t talk.

“So,” she says, “are you in any pain?”

“My head hurts really bad.”

“What was the last thing you remember?”

“Something about… I think I was with one of my friends, and we were standing in front of this brick wall.”

“You were there voluntarily?”

“Of course, I was. I was with one of my friends.” It curls its fingers once the oil is gone. Amazed a little, it looks up at Tyler and says, “Thanks,” with bright eyes.

Tyler throws away the tissues and sits back in his chair.

She points at Tyler. “Do you recall him?”

Its reaction is expected. Tyler doesn’t let it affect him.

“No, I’m sorry. Am I supposed to?”

“What about your name?” she goes on. “Do you remember that or any other basic information?”

“One-hundred percent sure it starts with a J. Wait… Yeah, it starts with a J. I’m a boy, and… I think I’m a people person.”

“‘He,’” Tyler cuts in. “You use ‘he’?”

The way it looks at Tyler, it looks like there are actual gears in its head trying to turn amongst all the cobwebs. “Yeah.” It smiles. “What about you? Do you use ‘he,’ too?”

Tyler nods.

“Hey, since I don’t remember my name, and we seem like we’re on good terms, how about you call me ‘J’ in the meantime? What’s your name?”

“Tyler Joseph.”

“That’s a good name. Did you just make it up yourself?”

“No… I… That’s my name. It’s my name.” Tyler furrows his brow.

And J, he’s starting to swing his legs now. “It’s a good name.”

More déjà vu, more shivers, Tyler turns his attention to the doctor, who’s been carefully monitoring their conversation from behind the monitor. She’s nodding. She’s rubbing her chin. She says, “The memory loss should wear off after a few hours, a day at max. Sleeping it off is recommended, especially in your condition. And… Tyler…” She looks at him. “You said you fell on your head, too, right?”

“My arm got most of it, but yes.”

“You should let me—”

“No.” More than simple stubbornness, tears begin to prick at his eyes. “I don’t want you. Please, don’t—”

“Okay.” She won’t look at him now. “I’ll get that oil change for you two.” And then, she leaves them. And then, they’re by themselves, J still swinging his legs, Tyler unable to comprehend just what he might have gotten himself into upon coming here.

“Aren’t cars the only things supposed to get an oil change?” J asks. “I don’t think we’re cars, for one.”

“No, not cars,” Tyler replies, and glares at the objects in her hands when she returns. An oil change can’t be as simple as drinking from a juice box.

She gives one to Tyler and another one to J. “This should hold you two over for a few months, but if you need one sooner or something doesn’t feel quite right, you can come back here, and we’ll take care of you.”

J slurps it down with a grin on his face.

Tyler has yet to test the waters. “Is it possible we can just… hit up a store and purchase some ourselves?”

“Of course, you can do that, but if you’ve been out there, you tend to notice most grocery stores, and most facilities, really, like to pretend we don’t exist.”

Tyler places the straw in his mouth and takes a sip. It tastes like watered-down fruit punch.

J says, “What are you talking about? ‘Pretend we don’t exist.’ I’ve met loads of people who accept me for who I am and don’t care I’m part car.”

She presses her lips together to keep from laughing. “I apologize for insinuating otherwise.”

“It’s okay.”

She takes in a slow breath. “I can call someone to take you to the home I told you about earlier. Before you both go, I think I should give you the flu vaccine. It doesn’t work as effectively on us, but any form of protection is better than nothing.”

“Hey,” J says, “can we drink these whenever?”

Here she is, lips white from how hard she presses them together now. “I wouldn’t recommend it. We can ingest anything anybody else can, so maybe you’ll enjoy actual fruit punch a lot better.”

J smiles. Tyler knows that smile. “Thank you,” he tells her, head turning to follow her across the room.

“It wasn’t a problem at all.” She lingers for a moment, as if to say something else, but she ultimately shakes her head and leaves to fetch the flu jabs.

*

She catches Tyler on their way into the waiting room. Her hand is strong on the crook of his elbow, holding him back, her eyes on his, her words stern—“You’re going to need to trust someone.”

His gut reaction is to spit in her face, but he knows that will end badly, no matter white coats don’t surround him. “Why?” he asks her, a stupid question.

“Because believe it or not, there might be more people out here than you realize who are in your shoes.”

And now, he pulls his arm from her, nothing but disgust on his face. “Why does everybody think I want revenge? If that’s your style, then go for it. Leave me out of it. I just want to live my life and—”

“No, not that.” She’s frowning, taking his arm again in apology, softer this time. “Revenge not in a typical sense, I meant. It isn’t right, what they do. You’re proof of that, and I would think he is, too.” She nods toward J, who’s chatting with the receptionist. There’s a goofy smile on his face as he talks with his hands, fixing the hat’s lid to twist around, to wear backwards, no more need for the obscurity. “Corruption, lawsuits,” she continues, “you could bring them down in a civil manner. You need to trust people to know more about you. I know your name. If you tell me your story, I—”

He interrupts her. He says, “There’s a stomach inside my brain.” He says, “My name is all I have.”

He says, “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

She looks regretful. She says, “You’re welcome.”

J says, “Hey, Tyler,” and that’s it. He says, “Hey,” because he can, because he wants to say it. He says, “Hey,” and he’s smiling.

Tyler thinks his purpose is in that smile. Tyler thinks that’s pathetic.

J is still smiling. “Let’s go.”

“Okay.”

And J leads them outside, toward the car out front and onward to their new home.

*

With traditional vinyl siding and dirt blending into the cement foundation, the house has a single light in the window, coming from a lamp. Tyler wonders if the light is a signal. It isn’t dark outside just yet. Late evening, but that doesn’t mean a thing when the sun is still in the sky. Setting in the distance, it provides them ease in walking toward the front door.

The car waits by the curb, watching. They didn’t have to pay. The driver is checking to make sure they get inside safely. No one knows who will be on the other side of the door when they knock.

J knocks. Tyler stares at the van in the driveway. He stares at the solar panels on the roof. He stares at J.

J’s pale, rubbing his eyes. He needs to sleep it off.

He knocks again.

When the door opens, the car drives away.

The man who opens the door is emaciated, dressed in layers not suitable for the warm weather outside. He pulls his jacket in closer, by the lapels, squinting his eyes. “Yeah?”

Tyler shows him the sticky note, hoping he’d recognize the handwriting. His eyes only narrow more.

“Can we stay here for a few days?” Tyler asks, then adds, “We’ll be quiet.”

Behind the man, people move around, some in states of undress. The air is thick with fog that isn’t fog. They’re cooking low-maintenance food.

J says, “We just need a bed. Not even a bed, really. And, yeah, we’ll be quiet.”

“I’ve got a room,” he says. “It’s small. Are you two together?”

“We don’t mind sharing a bed, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Yeah, totally. That’s exactly what I was askin’. Follow me. Wipe your feet on the doormat.”

This is the third good thing to come.

Maybe it’s incense. The fog filters out once they go deeper into the house. It curls from flower pots that hold no flowers, from sticks in tin cans, from the dimmest light between someone’s fingers. Tyler doesn’t realize he’s wandering toward the smoke until J’s fingers find his and guides him back on course. Gently, he pulls, and gently, he leans forward and whispers in Tyler’s ear, “Don’t look so scared, okay? I’m here.”

Because of the smoke, it wouldn’t be so farfetched to believe there should be loud music accompanying it. However, everything is mellow, and the most noise Tyler hears is the sound of someone in the kitchen trying to flip a grilled cheese and the faint hum of television sets behind closed doors. They pass many closed doors. Tyler loses count. He looks at his feet.

“We got basic cable. Bathroom’s last room on the left. I can’t guarantee fresh towels, which is fuckin’ weird because the washer’s always runnin’,” the man says, slowing down to a shuffle once they reach a door that isn’t closed but cracked. He nods toward it and works on tugging his jacket by the lapels again.

Tyler looks at the middle of J’s shoulders.

“I have food in the kitchen. If you’re true to your word and stay quiet, I’ll let you in on some of the pot I’ve got growing in my backyard.”

J smiles. “That’s very generous of you. I don’t think we’re going to stay long. Just need a place to sleep off our migraines.”

“We’ve all been there. In that case, I’ve also got some, uh, some pills that’ll just knock you out.”

“We’ll be okay on our own. Thank you, though. I don’t think I’ve ever been offered drugs before.”

“It’s good you turned ’em down. Don’t do drugs.” He points at J, and he points around J to point at Tyler. “Well, I keep to the couch, mostly, but my room is the first one you see coming down the hall. Get someone if ya need anything. We’re all friends here.”

“What’s your name?” Tyler asks.

The man takes a moment before replying. “Mr. Mister.”

Tyler frowns. “That’s not very unique.”

“It doesn’t have to be unique. It’s just my name.”

J wants to sleep. He says, “Sweet dreams,” and he goes into the room, and Tyler follows because J is already starting to close the door. And as the door closes, J begins to close. He’s dropping onto the bed, his head in his hands, his fingers pulling at his hair, shoving his hat off and onto the floor. “Sometimes, it gets so exhausting.”

“What does?” Tyler fumbles with the lamp on the bedside table. The bulb is faint. It provides enough light for them to see.

Kicking away his shoes and pulling his legs to his chest, J mumbles, “Being nice.”

Their room is a box. They have to share a twin-sized bed with the covers already unmade, with four pillows, with a post missing from the footboard. Pressed against the wall next to the door, a table serves more as a desk than a table—even then, it’s barely that. Holes in the walls made by thumbtacks and nails and the ceiling fan rocking from side to side aren’t hints to leave at once. If anything, it feels more at home than everything else. It means life is here—life that is not made of white coats and goggles and nodding and chin-rubbing.

At least there’s carpet under their feet and a roof over their heads.

“You know you don’t have to be nice all the time,” Tyler says.

“No, you don’t understand.”

“You’re not obligated to be nice to anybody.”

“I need to be nice. It’s part of the… job description.”

Tyler sets the earpieces on the bedside table, paperweights for the scraps from his pocket. He works off his boots next. “So, you’re starting to remember some things.”

“I’m starting to remember what a bad decision I made when I declined those drugs.”

“You don’t have to be nice to me. If you’re getting tired of being nice, then you don’t have to be nice to me.”

J drops his hands, resting his elbows on his knees. He curls his toes into the metal bedframe, socks still on his feet. “I can’t be mean to you. You saved my life.”

Tyler feels the blood in his veins rush to his cheeks. Awkwardly, more rushed than needed right now, he shifts his weight from foot to foot. He does his best when it comes to avoiding eye contact, but he ultimately fails. It’s painful to look at J. Tyler’s chest constricts, and it feels as if there’s a hand grabbing his throat.

It takes a moment to recognize the hand at his throat is his own.

He drops it.

He says, “Do you think that was selfish of me?”

“Are you seriously asking if saving my life was selfish of you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Tyler shrugs. He runs his hand down the front of his jumpsuit, undoing the top button.

J shakes his head. “Maybe it was selfish of you. I don’t fully know what’s going on. Do you need the light on?”

As his answer, Tyler switches it off.

“Don’t you have a migraine?”

“I do.”

The bed groans when J falls back and rolls, rolls, rolls until he’s flush against the wall. No space between it and the bed, J claims the right side of the bed as his own. Tyler doesn’t mind; he prefers being on the left anyway.

“Go to sleep,” J says, and raises his head to Tyler poking at the covers.

“I’m cold.”

“That wasn’t nice of me.”

And they smile.

J sits up. Tyler gets in bed. They each pull at their corner of the blankets as they lie down. It’s cold under here. Tyler shivers, rolling onto his stomach. They need more clothes.

“Is this okay?” J asks, and scoots closer to Tyler, his hand on the small of Tyler’s back.

There goes the blushing again.

It’s because he’s infatuated.

“It’d be okay if you… if you did more.”

J does more. He sticks his arms under Tyler’s chest, scooping him up, pulling him in, and Tyler suddenly doesn’t mind the added pressure of J’s head laying on top of his.

“Maybe in the morning,” J says, his jaw working, Tyler feeling it against his temple, “I’ll remember my name.”

Instead of falling asleep to the sound of the blood in his veins, Tyler falls asleep to J snoring.

And it’s a beautiful sound.

*

He wakes to moonlight in his eyes. He’s back in the dumpster with J comatose. He’s back in the dumpster with only the alphabet to keep him sane. He’s back in the dumpster.

It doesn’t smell like gasoline.

Tyler knows he isn’t really back in the dumpster, but his mind thinks it is for a moment before he wakes. The moon is at fault. The curtains, dirty and parted, are not good barriers when it comes to this, when it comes to the moonlight whispering for his eyes to open.

And his eyes open, and his eyes slowly roll in their sockets to focus on nothing but the hazy form of a person standing in front of the bed. They’re facing front, turned to the TV set on the table that’s a desk that’s not a table as they lean against the footboard. An arm raises, their shadow cut off at their elbow. They’re able to block out most of the television screen, subconsciously making sure Tyler isn’t woken by the light of the TV.

But he’s awake.

But the moon was the one who woke him.

He turns onto his back, an arm above his head, and says, “J?”

J’s shoulders flinch, an up-and-down motion, and whispers, “Yeah.” A juice box in his hand, J climbs to sit on the footboard, unwise to do so. He manages. “Are you okay?” He doesn’t sit still for long. It’s safer on the bed.

Tyler crosses his ankles. “I think I am. My head doesn’t hurt.”

“Mine’s a little… numb. The pain, I mean—the pain’s numb.” J holds out the juice box for Tyler to take. This is the actual thing, not just a watered-down version serving as a supplement to ensure the tears that leave their eyes look as human as possible.

“You should sleep some more.” Tyler passes the juice box to J after another drink.

J shrugs, like the suggestion is ridiculous. Maybe it is right now. Maybe he can’t sleep.

“Do you remember anything?” Tyler raises his hand and drops it.

“I… I don’t know what I’m remembering. Remembering just makes me… sick.” J sips on his juice, his teeth grinding the tip of the straw until it’s flat.

Tyler stares at him. “Maybe it’s the juice,” he offers, a placebo effect coming over him as he gingerly rubs his stomach.

“No, it’s not that. I think… I’m really scared, Tyler.”

Tyler comes forward as J comes forward, too, J’s forehead dropping to Tyler’s shoulder, J slumping, deflating, until he truly is deadweight against Tyler. This isn’t a problem for Tyler; J fell onto his good side, his elbow still a little sensitive if he stretches out his arm.

“Why are you scared? Are you scared I’m going to judge you or make fun of you?”

“I’m—just—scared.” J’s pushing into Tyler, juice box in hand, forcing Tyler to fall onto his back, nearly missing collusion with the headboard.

Tyler collects J into his arms by pulling on J’s shirt, by digging his fingers under the blades of his shoulders and lifting, yanking. And J doesn’t mind. He moves. He molds. He snakes his arms around Tyler’s waist, Tyler feeling the last remnants of the juice hit the small of his back as J squeezes and clings to Tyler with everything he has.

“Do you remember your name?” Tyler whispers, eyes on the television set and some late-night sitcom.

“That’s what scares me the most,” J says into Tyler’s sternum.

“Your initials,” Tyler tries. “Mine are TRJ. What are yours?”

J takes a moment to breathe. “It used to be JWD.”

Maybe J wasn’t meant to remember anything. Maybe J’s function isn’t Tyler’s function, where he was required to remember.

Maybe J was supposed to be just a pretty face.

Tyler holds J a little tighter.

“I think there’s another letter in there, or I’m messing up somewhere.”

“What letter?” Tyler wraps a curl behind J’s ear around his finger. He tugs, not too hard, an absent gesture.

“Another J.”

Tyler pushes his tongue into his cheek. He says nothing. And then, “It’s okay if you don’t remember a lot. I don’t remember much.”

J works the juice box out from behind Tyler and tosses it onto the nightstand. It’s wet where Tyler lays, so he twists, and J follows, recovering briefly to slide farther up on the bed, properly now, Tyler on his left. “Why don’t you remember anything?” he asks, swiping his thumb across the bridge of Tyler’s nose.

“Something happened when they were assembling me. Instead of a brain, there’s a stomach inside my head. I don’t know if that’s even why I can’t remember anything, if that’s my… malfunction. I, I… I think they could have easily removed it and placed a brain in there. Or they could have removed the stomach from my brain. I don’t know.”

J runs the pads of his thumbs under Tyler’s eyes. He catches tears.

“I don’t know,” Tyler repeats.

“That’s okay,” J says, and he smiles—tries to smile. Tyler knows it hurts.

“Is it?”

“Yeah. We can figure out stuff together.”

Tyler smiles, and it even hurts to smile himself.

“For one”—J raises his eyebrows—“I had no idea what you were talking about a few seconds ago. ‘Assembling me’ sounds kind of… weird, you know? But after you said that, I guess it makes sense now. Maybe.” J sets his hand on Tyler’s chest. He doesn’t move it. He says, “I think I… When we were in that clinic, we drank oil, and it helped us. And, like, dude, that’s a little weird if humans just straight up drank oil, but we’re not human, are we?”

Tyler can’t look away. “You already know the answer to that.”

“I do. That’s also why I’m scared.”

J has a span of freckles across the bridge of his nose. The bruises disguised it, but now Tyler can see.

Tyler wants to shake the hands of every angel who left their mark on J’s skin.

“There’s so much to this world, and I’m only just now remembering little things. I had a really weird dream that we were robots, but… I guess that’s not as weird as it could be.”

“Yeah.”

Blowing air from between his lips, J puffs out his cheeks and shakes his head. “This just makes me—”

“Sick, yeah. You said that before. Try to go back to sleep. You need to get all the rest you can get.” Tyler pulls the blankets around them, J settling onto his side as Tyler does the same.

“We’ll see how we feel in the morning,” Tyler continues, “and then we’ll go from there. Does that sound okay?”

J nods his agreement.

And then, he smiles.

And Tyler is suddenly thankful no one has made a move to turn off the TV. The heart in his chest races, the rapid beating almost painful.

“Do you count sheep when you can’t sleep?” asks J, fixing the blankets, giving Tyler more of the share. Tyler doesn’t argue. He doesn’t push them back.

He replies, “I say the alphabet.”

“Really?”

“Alpha,” Tyler starts. “Bravo… Charlie… Delta…”

“Echo,” J sighs, eyes shutting, lips parting. He’s going to snore again.

Tyler whispers, “Foxtrot.”

*

Tyler dreams of golden rings and doves against clouds.

He wakes crying, with J’s hands on his face, with J’s thumbs drying the tears from the dark circles under his eyes again. Neither moved during their slumber, instead lying parallel to each other, not touching, but they’re touching now.

J murmurs, shushing him. “It’s okay. Tyler, Tyler…”

Tyler shakes his head.

J shakes his head, too. “No, Tyler, it is. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“How can you sound so sure?”

“I don’t know.” J is now the one to pull Tyler into his chest, to his sternum, and Tyler allows himself to bury his nose into the front of J’s t-shirt and breathe.

They breathe together.

This is the fourth good thing to come.

“Thank you,” Tyler says.

Slowly, agonizingly slow, J traces Tyler’s hairline. The trembling of his fingertips is even slow. They pepper Tyler’s skin. Tyler doesn’t mind the pressure.

J turns his head, narrowing his eyes at the curtains, dirty and still parted. “Sleep, right? Go to sleep. We can go back to sleep. Do you see? It’s still dark out. We can sleep some more.” J runs his fingers through Tyler’s hair and pushes it from his forehead. This gesture is familiar, too. J’s hands are familiar. J’s small upturn of the corner of his mouth is familiar.

“It’s just a bad dream,” J tells Tyler.

“It wasn’t real,” J tells Tyler.

“Go to sleep,” J tells Tyler.

Tyler rubs his knuckles into his eyes. “I’ll try.”

“Do the alphabet, okay? Alpha… Bravo… Charlie…”

J shuts off the TV.

“Echo,” J says.

“Delta,” Tyler corrects.

“Oh.” J looks young in the moonlight. He smiles. “Delta, right. And then, it’s… Echo.”

“Foxtrot,” Tyler says.

Tyler doesn’t dream.

They sleep for three days.

*

When they come to, it’s to Mr. Mister leaning over the bed and holding a compact mirror under their noses—J first, and then Tyler.

He checks to see if they’re breathing.

They are.

Tyler rouses first, making eye contact with Mr. Mister’s hand hovering above his shoulder, ready to shake him awake. His brow hurts from how hard he furrows it.

“I was startin’ to worry about you two,” Mr. Mister says, and turns the mirror around in his hands. “Last I heard from you was runnin’ into your friend in the kitchen a few days ago. He grabbed some juice and told me his head was killin’ him. I offered him some of those pills again, and he took ’em in his juice, and you can’t blame me for thinking he died… or whatever. But you two are breathing, so… nobody died.”

“Do people usually die after you give them drugs?”

“Sometimes.”

“What did you give him?”

“Just something to ease the pain.”

J said his pain was numb.

Tyler forces himself to sit.

J rolls to face the wall.

“Need to get up,” Mr. Mister says. “I value my sleep as much as the next person, but sleepin’ all the time isn’t the way to go. I don’t know what you two went through to get here; this place isn’t for the privileged, and it’s usually found by word of mouth. It’s obvious you need to be here. It’s also obvious you can’t waste away in this room because you’re down on your luck and have nowhere else to go. It might sound like I’m kickin’ you out. I’m not. I’m helpin’ you.”

“Helping us.”

Mr. Mister scratches his chin. “Get your friend up. Go outside. I’ll put an occupied sign on this room. No vacancy.” Quietly, he adds, “Please. Just go out in the backyard. Getting some sun is good, even if it’s for a few minutes. Need help standing?”

“I think I’m—”

“Lemme help you.” Mr. Mister leans over again, this time wrapping his arm around Tyler’s waist. Tyler doesn’t fight. He doesn’t realize how weak he is until he’s upright and seeing stars. “You’re doing so well,” Mr. Mister says, though, and he rubs Tyler’s shoulders and doesn’t let go of him until he’s able to stand on his own without swaying or assistance.

“Want me to help your friend?” Mr. Mister goes on to ask, and Tyler nods without a word. He watches J revert to his previous state of mobility. He keeps his eyes open now. That’s good.

J is weak, too. He doesn’t stand straight away, which would have been bad in any situation. No, J immediately sits on the edge of the bed after Mr. Mister gets him onto his feet.

“It’s okay.” Mr. Mister crouches to get level with J’s face. He touches J’s cheeks. “Take your time.”

Fingers going in circles, touching J’s neck, his chin, Mr. Mister frowns at J parting his lips, tilting his head back, and whispering something Tyler doesn’t pick up, but Mr. Mister definitely does, for he lightly smacks J’s cheek and says, “You keep those comments to yourself. Need to at least buy me dinner first.”

Tyler furrows his brow again.

Next time Mr. Mister aides J in standing, he does so successfully. “Go to the kitchen. Door leads right out there. It’s not too hot today.”

Somehow, they make it outside without any trouble. Tyler doesn’t remember walking here, and he doesn’t remember passing anybody or seeing anybody in the house, but that doesn’t matter right now. J and he sit on a swing in the backyard, next to a marijuana garden, and soak up all the sun they can get.

It feels nice.

J says, “Talk to me.” He curls his toes. Sometime in his sleep, he shoved off his socks. Neither he nor Tyler bothered to put on their shoes before coming outside.

The sky is blue.

Tyler plays with the buttons on his jumpsuit. “What d’you want me to talk about?”

“I think you’re pretty smart. I mean, like, your voice… you sound smart. You sound like you know what you’re saying, and I could listen to you talk for hours.” J shrugs at the same time Tyler shrugs, more so because he’s at a loss for words rather than removing his clothing.

The skin on his shoulders, while still covered by the black fabric of his sleeveless shirt, warms to the sun. It feels as if the color to his skin begins to return. It feels right. He looks around the yard, around the world around him, and for a moment, for a very brief moment, he feels a twinge of pain in his stomach. He chooses to ignore it as he ties the sleeves of his jumpsuit around his waist. “What do you remember?”

J answers quickly, “I remember everything, except who I am.”

“I can listen, too,” Tyler says. “Talk to me.”

Mr. Mister joins them outside, carrying two bowls in hand, spoons stuck inside the broth. Chicken noodle soup, crushed crackers floating, they each eagerly take the food and devour what they can before Mr. Mister scolds them, not for eating too fast, but for being messy. “I didn’t bring out any napkins for you,” he says.

J apologizes.

Tyler says, “Do you know why we’re here? You said it’s obvious why we’re here, but do you know exactly why?”

Tugging on the lapels of his jacket, Mr. Mister lowers himself to sit in the grass. He doesn’t care if he acquires grass stains or gets a little dirty. He sits because it’s story time.

“You came from that clinic,” he starts, “because I recognized the doctor’s handwriting. We used to fuck. She told me once she made it out of here, she was gonna become a doctor, and she’s going to help people like us. And she did that. She became a doctor, got married, opened that little clinic of hers, and she sends anyone who needs a place to sleep here. I let them stay as long as they don’t cause too much of a disruption. You two have been just lovely.”

“We’ve been asleep for most of our stay,” Tyler says.

“Whatever. My point is that good behavior delivers rewards.” He scratches the back of his head. “I’ve seen a lot of unfortunate people come through my days. Some don’t survive that first night. Most of them don’t… they don’t… Okay, let me put it like this: they’re not like you two. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anybody like you two before. Yeah, I’m sure you applied some of that special cream to get rid of those bruises on your face, but it never kicks in as fast as the packaging says, you know. And then, complainin’ about those migraines? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened. Well… I take that back. It doesn’t take a genius, but it does take someone like us and someone who has extensive knowledge about us to figure it ou’.”

“What do you mean by that?” J asks, bowl of soup in his lap, spoon halfway to his mouth.

“No one’s escaped is what I mean by that. People don’t just… leave that place unless it’s after they pass their tests.”

“But I’ve passed their tests,” J says. “I made it past all their trials. I got to wear clothes, and I went outside and stayed out there for an hour, and I went grocery shopping, and they introduced me to animals and let me have my own apartment and form friendships and maintain a job. I didn’t escape.”

Tyler stares at J.

Mr. Mister blinks. “But they brought you back in, didn’t they? What’d they say it was for? Routine checkup?”

J falters. “Yeah.”

“And what happened after that?”

“One of my friends took me down this hallway and…” J looks down. “I kept getting these headaches and chest pains. All of my friends complained about me crying too much. One of them, this girl, she told me I was too nice. I bought her flowers once, and s-she said I was suffocating her. Of course, I went back to that place. I wanted to know if there was something wrong with me. Those doctors just looked at me, and they told me there wasn’t anything wrong with me. Even with all those wires in my skin and those smiles on their faces, I believed them when they told me there wasn’t anything wrong with me. Why shouldn’t I, right? Why would they lie to me about something like that?”

“When they discarded me”—Tyler shifts his weight to face J on the swing, his bowl of soup resting on his thigh—“they told me that if they threw me away when they did, then it would have benefited them more. They would have gotten more money if they said I was a failure from the start. Maybe it’s the same with you. I don’t know.”

J wipes at his eyes.

“I made it out of there, and I didn’t fuckin’ remember a thing when they dropped me off here.” Mr. Mister picks at his thumb. “Not ‘here’ as in this neighborhood. ‘Here’ as in… the world. Their last test makes you forget about the time you spent with them. It used to be rare that we remember, but it’s becoming more common now. Maybe the newer models are more stubborn. Maybe we have somebody on the inside who’s made their way up the ranks and is tearin’ it from the inside out.

“We can remove our trackers. Yours are gone. They would have been on top of us if you were still in their system. If you’re out here for a while, like I was, then they don’t bat an eye when a tracker shows up in a dumpster or doesn’t move for several weeks or months. We can be victims of murders, too, just like humans, and we can die as naturally as anybody else. Me? I hid my tracker in a birdhouse and left.”

“So, we… w-we aren’t supposed to be here right now,” J says, turning his gaze onto Tyler. “You were thrown away with me? Is that correct? And you saved me.”

“They smashed my face into that wall and dropped me down the trash chute… I never lost consciousness. I was supposed to when they knocked my head, but I never did. You fell down after me. Look, maybe it doesn’t make a lot of sense to you because it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either, but I couldn’t let the trash collectors take you. They helped me. They helped us.”

“And now you two are here.” Mr. Mister points at each of them, both hands, pointer fingers shaking. “I’m incredibly happy you two survived that first night, and the nights after that. I have faith in you to keep on wakin’ up each morning. Or afternoon.”

Tyler moves his spoon around in his soup, pushing aside soggy pieces of cracker.

Beside him, J says, “I think we need to leave. Could you help us with that?”

Instead of pressuring them to stay, Mr. Mister nods and offers his help, once again.

*

They return to the kitchen. They stand around the table as Mr. Mister wanders through the house with a checklist in his head. He talks to himself and counts on his fingers whenever they see him. The clock above the stove says it’s five o’clock. No one appears to be awake right now, except the three of them. Despite the environment and their odds, Mr. Mister wanted them to be okay. He may have only had the courage until much later in the day to check on them, or maybe he had slept the day away, only waking hours before.

Tyler didn’t ask why J thought they should leave. Arguing could lead to a fight, and a fight could lead to separation. As pathetic as it may seem, having J by his side is fundamental to Tyler’s ability to function.

When Mr. Mister walks past the kitchen for the umpteenth time, Tyler sets his hand on the curve of J’s back. He slightly curls his fingers, enough to scratch a little. He doesn’t miss the way J shuts his eyes. He doesn’t miss the way J shudders—violently, almost—and moves away from Tyler’s touch. “Not here,” he says, as an excuse. Swiftly, he adds, “I’ll explain later.”

It’s all Tyler needs to not lose himself right there.

“Okay, I packed a bag. Basic stuff, really.” Mr. Mister sets the bag on the kitchen table, standing on the other side, across from them. “There’re also two cell phones for you. If anything goes wrong with them, just give me a ring. I’m listed under ‘Da’ on each of them.”

“Do the authorities know about you?” asks Tyler. “Is that why you can’t use your real name?”

“Did you actually think my real name was ‘Mr. Mister’?”

“Why would you lie about your name? It’s your name.”

Mr. Mister moves on. “My real name, my code name—I just want to be safe. I’m not sayin’ you’re going to get caught first thing when you step outta here, but I’m just preparin’ you two. Okay? Right, so… Don’t worry about the bill with them. My official job description says this is a rehab center for trauma victims. Believe it or not, all these cellular devices don’t raise any suspicion, as well as the pot in my backyard. Nobody cares about that sort of thing when we’re in a rehab center—for trauma victims. Are you following me? Trauma victims need spare phones and a little puff-puff more than anybody else in the world.”

“They won’t care if you give out phones and pay for them because you can just say you’re giving them to your patients in order for them to start their new lives away from their abusers or whoever did them harm,” J says.

“There we go.” Mr. Mister tightens the drawstring on the bag. “I’ve left you some cash in an inside pocket. Stupid question to ask, but do either of you have any form of identification?”

“Depends on if you think it’s safe to drop by my old apartment.”

To Mr. Mister’s pressed-together lips, J sighs. “Guess that was hopeful of me.”

“I figured as much, so I wrote the address of one of my friends on the back of whatever paper you had in your room. She’ll get you hooked up.”

“Did you sleep with her, too?” J asks, Tyler leaning forward to take the bag and drag it closer to them. It feels heavier than he would have expected.

“Sleep in the same bed? Yes. Fuck? Nah, she only likes girls. I have clothes in there, as well. Tried to find stuff that’d fit.” He shrugs. “You sure you want to leave now? Frankly, you two look like utter shit.”

Tyler draws attention to himself, nodding and slinging the bag onto his back. “Did you put those earpieces in here?”

J narrows his eyes.

Mr. Mister says, “Yes.”

J steers the conversation around again. He glances at Tyler as Tyler leaves the kitchen to pop into their bedroom. “We really should be going. We were only supposed to stay as long as it took for our migraines to go away.”

Tyler pulls on his boots and snatches the baseball cap from the floor. It goes on his head, after he makes sure his hair is swept off his forehead. J won’t need it. Tyler picks up J’s socks, rolling them into a bundle, and grabs J’s shoes next. He leaves the room.

“You’re welcome anytime,” Mr. Mister says, “and I’m not obligated to say that.”

Socks and shoes, J pulls them on and aims a smile at Tyler. “Thanks,” he says, and he says, “Thanks,” to Mr. Mister, over his shoulder, done while he’s still crouching to tie his shoes. He stands and maneuvers Tyler to spin on his feet. J digs inside the backpack and fishes out the scrap of paper with the address. “I won’t forget you,” J says.

“Go, will you? I’ll call someone to drive you. Gonna make me cry.”

*

They reach her house a little after five thirty. She answers the door in her pajamas with a toothbrush hanging from her mouth, bags under her eyes. “Only just got his text,” she says. “Come in. Wait in the room at the end of the hallway.”

The room at the end of the hallway is a bedroom, a workshop, comfortable and complete with a loveseat next to the desktop computer. J sits here, Tyler falling into place to his left. As they wait for her to rinse out her mouth, J wraps his arm around Tyler’s shoulders. He doesn’t say anything. He rubs Tyler’s bicep.

Tyler smiles.

J pats his back before removing his arm. “Keep your head up.”

She enters the room, still in pajamas, her hair tied back loosely. “Just need IDs?”

“What else do you offer?” Tyler asks.

“Mostly IDs, but I can forge signatures, fake prescriptions. Need anything like that?”

“Nothing like that. Just IDs.”

“Okay.”

Tyler has little knowledge about this. He’s aware of photo identification and passports, but he quickly realizes she isn’t taking out a camera or even anything resembling a camera. Instead, she has a piece of paper and a pocketknife.

J slides forward until he perches on the edge of his seat. “Here,” he says, not exactly needed. He holds out his hand.

She pricks his thumb.

He waits.

She rummages around in a desk drawer. In her palm, a little bigger than the ones in Tyler’s bag, knock-offs, she hooks the devices to J’s ears and leans back in her seat, the leather creaking. She clicks around on her computer.

Tyler isn’t breathing. He’s holding his throat again.

A bead of red forms from the tiniest hole in J’s thumb. J stands up to do the next part; he pushes his thumb to the piece of paper, his blood staining, his blood becoming a perfect oval.

Tyler doesn’t want to breathe.

J sits down.

She’s typing now.

“Do you two want to be able to drive?” she asks.

“Yes,” J says, “that would be helpful.”

She uses her hand as a fan to dry the blood. Tyler anticipates it wrinkling, but it doesn’t wrinkle. She places it in a scanner on the floor and resumes typing.

J rubs his hands together, mindful of his thumb. “How much do we owe you?”

“It’s free,” she says. “This will always be free for people like us.”

“Tell me about yourself,” Tyler says.

She glares. She talks. “I was one of their sex dolls. They told me I wasn’t modeled after anybody, but I saw the girl who looked exactly like me on the second day I lived on my own. That was when I remembered. Next time I went in for a tune-up, I questioned them about where my face came from. They said I came from someone’s sketch. Nobody owned up to it. I think they thought we wouldn’t run into each other, or that the girl I was based off of would’ve died. She wasn’t well. It doesn’t matter. We had different colored eyes, and I had a thinner waist and fuller lips. I guess they thought that was enough of a difference.”

“Do you still work for them?” J asks this, interested, eyes wide.

“Yeah. The pay’s good. They don’t know I know what they know. Ignorance is bliss. If you walk in there with a big-ass smile on your face and bright-as-fuck eyes, they’re none the wiser. Here’s your ID.”

It’s standard size, pure-white, with the red imprint of J’s thumb in the center. No writing to be seen, Tyler wonders if it’s invisible or seen under a blacklight. Maybe it’s implanted within the plastic, like computer code.

Tyler takes in a slow, deep breath.

“Put those on him,” she says, gesturing to her ears.

Tyler shakes his head. “No, that’s okay. Whatever you need to know, I can tell you.”

“As impressive as that is, I need to know the serial numbers in—”

“Isn’t there another—?”

“Tyler,” J urges, gently, “it’s all right. It doesn’t hurt. She’s not going to—”

But Tyler’s crying, and J hugs him, rubs his back, coos into his neck.

She spins the pocketknife between her fingers.

“Is it because of what’s in your head?” J holds Tyler’s shoulders.

Tyler looks at his hands.

J takes the devices from his ears. “I didn’t judge you. She won’t either. She’s one of us.”

“I could care less if something’s off about you,” she says, bored. “Wanna know what they did with me? They said it was an accident. They didn’t connect my brain fully to its stem before they sent me into the real world. I flatlined. Twice. They saved me, fixed me. Said it was only possible because of their insurance policy on their sex dolls—wait”—she rolls her eyes—“I meant to say ‘human companions.’”

Carefully, J hooks the devices on Tyler’s ears, pushing them into place. “See,” he whispers, “nothing scary.” He takes the pocketknife from her next, but that only makes Tyler forget how to breathe properly again.

Breathing more than breathing less, Tyler manages to calm down once J laces their fingers together and squeezes. “Just a little pinch,” he says, the sound of her typing serving as background noise. “This shouldn’t be scary.”

“I guess I… I didn’t know what would be inside of me.”

J uses the tip of the knife to cut into Tyler’s thumb. They wait for the blood to surface.

“What did you think was inside of us?”

Tyler shakes his head. He doesn’t answer.

His thumb kisses the blank sheet of paper when able.

She says, “You aren’t nearly as fucked up as you think you are.”

Tyler holds his ID in his hands. It’s hot, fresh off the press.

“Anything else?” She has a ring through her bleached eyebrow.

“Yeah,” J murmurs, reverting to rubbing Tyler’s back. “Know any good motels?”

*

On the bus ride into town, J takes the bag from Tyler and rummages inside it. This is done without looking, without drawing attention—by merely touch alone. J has his eyes on Tyler, the bag between his knees. He says, “First thing I think we need to do is go to a dollar store and get some toothbrushes.”

Tyler isn’t looking at him. While J’s eyes are on him, Tyler’s eyes focus on the window to his left. Never before has he seen this many people—and not one white coat in sight.

Judging by their choice of clothing and the sparse, green leaves on the branches of every tree they pass, Tyler deciphers it’s spring. A chilly day lies in the forecast, overcast sun, no chance of rain. Tyler watches picnics unfold in parks, large blankets encompassing the grass and gnarled tree roots. Cats run down alleys. Dogs walk with their owners and bark at the cats. Babies cry in their strollers.

Tyler looks away.

J continues to stare at him. “You never went through your tests,” he realizes.

Tyler shakes his head. He turns toward the window again. “I think they were biding their time. I was never going to make it out of there. I was too… buggy.”

“She said you weren’t—”

“Because before they threw me out, they fixed what was wrong with me, excluding my head. My heart, it… The only reason they discarded me when they did was because I was hellbent on not remembering who I was.”

“And they needed you to remember.” J bites the inside of his cheek. “Do you know what department you were from?”

“All they said was ‘sensitive.’ What… what about you?”

A laugh leaves J’s mouth. “I was definitely not sensitive, I can tell you that much.”

The bus stops in front of a grocery store. J stands and has to sit back down to nudge Tyler into standing. “Follow me,” he says.

Tyler does.

Instead of them going into the grocery store, J leads them toward a smaller store off to the side, one with “DOLLAR GENERAL” across the front in bright yellow. Through the aisles they go, the bag on J’s shoulder, his hand in Tyler’s.

He said they needed toothbrushes.

En route there, J pauses in the personal hygiene aisle, sticking out his thumb and pointing at a shelf with menstrual pads and tampons. “Do you need any?” he asks Tyler, much to Tyler’s bewilderment.

“I… No, I don’t… Thank you for asking.”

J blinks.

As a reflex, Tyler touches his stomach.

The toothbrushes hang farther down the aisle. J pulls four off the rack and nods at a box of enamel-protecting toothpaste, two tubes to a box. “Get that?”

Tyler does. He’s still holding J’s hand. “What else do we need, oh wise one?”

J grins. “Fruit punch.”

The cashier looks at them funny. Tyler notices. J doesn’t. J’s pulling out money from the bag to hand to the cashier when asked. Maybe it’s peculiar a couple of men enter a dollar store to buy only toothbrushes, toothpaste, and juice boxes. But maybe it’s not peculiar at all. The cashier’s staring at them, narrowed eyes, something in those eyes. Tyler wonders if the cashier is one of them, if it’s even possible to recognize one of them after careful measures to make them as realistic as possible, but as soon as the cashier opens their mouth, Tyler lowers his head to avoid eye contact.

“Are you guys homeless?”

J says, “No, we’re panhandlers.”

The dental hygiene products go in their bag. Tyler carries the box of fruit punch under his arm as J handles the slip of paper with the addresses on it. First starting with the location of the clinic, and then Mr. Mister’s residence, the address of the girl who did their IDs, and the probable destination of a motel litter the back of the scrap paper. The last address is written in J’s hand, a little messy, a little uncoordinated. Both he and Tyler can read it, though, so there’s no harm here.

Tyler thinks they might need to recycle the paper soon.

J folds it to show only the address of the motel. “You know what?” he says, tapping the paper. “I think I know where this is.”

“Walking distance?”

“Yeah, I think it’s just a couple of blocks away. Do you need to hold my hand?”

“Why would I need to do that?”

“You’ve never been out here before. I assumed you developed anxiety and thought holding my hand would lessen the ordeal you’re going through.”

No response available, Tyler takes J’s outstretched hand and lets him lead them to the motel.

*

The man behind the counter doesn’t ask for identification. He lazily raises his hand and waves his fingers at the book set out in front of him, stained with coffee and already mostly filled with names. A pen rolls toward them. J scribbles, JJ & TJ, on a line.

Tyler says, “Wait, why did—?”

“I’m obligated to tell you we have free Wi-Fi, and we do not peek in on your web-browsing history,” the man drawls. “I am also obligated to tell you if you get caught up in any illegal activities, not limited to murder, and the police come here, we are obligated to hand over your search history.”

Tyler tugs on the hem of J’s shirt.

“We used to let our customers pay when they leave, but due to the increase of drug overdoses in our rooms, we are now obligated to ask for money up front.”

“Say that one more time,” Tyler mumbles.

J smiles and hands over enough cash to allow them to stay for a few days.

Tyler holds the key in his hand. It’s cold, grimy. He thinks of old pennies.

He gives the key to J and wipes his hand on the back of J’s t-shirt, only smiling as an apology.

It’s not even dark outside yet. Sun setting in the distance, the chatter in the halls and in the parking lot are idle and somewhat comforting. Tyler doesn’t see anyone. He doesn’t want to see anything. He pulls the baseball cap lower on his head and only raises his head to stare at J. J’s talking, saying something about how Tyler can use the shower first.

“Shower?”

J unlocks their door and steps inside.

Tyler tries not to take note of the single bed or how the curtains are drawn back.

“Yeah, shower,” J says, and pulls the curtains shut. “You can take one first.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Just being polite.”

“No, I don’t want to take a shower.”

Most people, Tyler assumes, would be disgusted, but J looks at him with knitted brows and his bottom lip in his mouth. He chews on it, pondering for a moment. “Hey,” he says, finally, and sits on the bed. “I know I joked around and seriously thought I was part-robot, but you must know we’re not actually going to fall apart if we go in water.”

“Of course, I know that.”

J eyes him. Eventually, J shakes his head and begins working off his shoes. “I think I know more than you now.” He flicks his gaze up to Tyler. “Ask me anything.”

“I’m confused, is all. I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know my purpose. She was there when they fucked up my initial assembling, and she did nothing. She just wanted money. She said they couldn’t try again, a-and that confused me. Try again with what? She kept saying my insurance only covered one attempt, and my family wouldn’t be reimbursed in any way. But then, she started saying ‘he,’ like… his insurance would only cover one attempt, and his family, and—and then she—”

He continues talking, even as J undresses him and pushes him toward the bathroom.

“—wouldn’t call me by my name. She said I wasn’t actually Tyler, but my name is Tyler, and I really didn’t appreciate the tone she had with me.”

J flicks on the hot water. Tyler rubs his arms.

J doesn’t stare. He says, “And they threw you out because you couldn’t remember anything?”

“She wanted me to tell her a childhood memory, but I told her my earliest memory was opening my eyes.”

“Where were you?”

“In a bed. White walls. Wearing a gown. She… I overheard her talking to one of the other doctors, and she said I needed to be perfect because I was married, but I don’t remember being married.”

J still does not stare. He finds towels for them. “They didn’t try to trigger your memories or attempt to bring them back?”

Tyler frowns. “They can do that?”

“Maybe. Get in the shower. I’ll be… out here if you need me.”

The water’s too hot on initial contact, but Tyler doesn’t adjust it. His skin will adapt. He enjoys it as much as he can, scrubbing it all away with body wash and two rounds of shampooing. No lather the first time around, Tyler massages his scalp and watches the suds slip from his fingers and land on his toes. He curls them.

“I have something I need to tell you,” J says, suddenly, in the bathroom with Tyler again. He hands Tyler a towel once Tyler pops out his head.

“What is it?”

“Uh, don’t turn off the water.”

Tyler doesn’t. He eases from the shower and pats himself dry.

J stares now. “I’ll tell you after…” He doesn’t finish, but Tyler understands.

“All right.”

They switch spots, J in the shower and Tyler in the bedroom. With the towel around his waist, Tyler pokes in the bag on their bed. Mr. Mister set some clothes aside for them. Going by his mismatched attire, Tyler’s hopes for what lies within aren’t high. He chooses the bare minimum right now, leaving the rest for J and the days to come. They’re going to need to purchase more clothes. When it comes down to it, they might be able to visit a secondhand store or a shelter of some kind. If there were clinics that serve unfortunate people like them, it wouldn’t be far off to assume the same could apply to their other necessities.

Slinging the towel around his shoulders, Tyler takes a seat on the carpeted floor. Dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of shorts that he thinks could be a tad longer, Tyler balances the phones in both hands. He presses the buttons on the devices’ sides and watches the screens light up. Identical, it’s impossible to determine whose phone is whose. A deeper look into the phone, specifically the contacts, Tyler learns the phone in his left hand is his while the phone in his right is J’s. The contacts alone are enough for him to know for certain; the left has “Juice Kid,” and the right has “Juice Kid’s Friend.”

Water stops running, and J dries himself. Towel on his waist, as well, J opens the bathroom door. He doesn’t leave. He’s leaning on the sink, hands gripping the edges. Fog clings to the medicine cabinet mirror.

J looks sick.

Tyler stands abruptly and ducks into the bathroom. Phones forgotten, the towel on his shoulders dropping to the floor, Tyler touches J’s arm. “Dude.” He studies the side of J’s face. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you need to sit down?”

“No, lemme just… lemme just stay here.” J squeezes his eyes shut, knuckles white, his skin white.

“Is it your head?”

“Yeah, man. My jaw, too. It’s, like… sharp.”

“I know you don’t want to move, but I think if you were lying on the bed, you’d—”

“Shut up.”

J can’t be nice right now.

Tyler scratches his chin. “Wait here.”

J tips forward until his head lightly bangs into the medicine cabinet.

Still in the bag, Tyler retrieves the earpieces, cradling them in his palm as he grabs his phone in the other. There’s that feeling of déjù vu again, right in the pit of his stomach.

“Put these in,” Tyler tells J, his attention on his phone. J does as he’s told. Tyler taps on the settings of his phone, scrolling through until a number appears on available Wi-Fi networks—2102060406. He connects to it immediately and watches as his phone’s screen fades to black and begins to spit out binary code. 01000011 01110010 01111001 01110011 01110100 01100001 01101100 00100000 01000011 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110010 00100000 01001001 01101110 01110011 01110100 01101001 01110100 01110101 01110100 01100101 01110011 repeats itself, flashing, forcing Tyler to hold the screen to his chest to keep the receptors in his eyes from shutting down.

“Why did you make me put these in?” asks J, eyes open now, the faintest hint of tears at the edges.

“I thought… I could do something.” Tyler chances it. He looks at his phone.

The binary code is gone, and what seems to be a menu occupies the phone screen. J stares at it with Tyler, just as amazed as him. “How did you—?”

“I don’t know!” Tyler smiles. “Want me to run a diagnostic test?”

“Think it’ll work?”

Tyler shrugs. “Who knows!”

He presses the button.

He waits for J’s reaction.

He expects something bad will happen.

But J just stands there, waiting with Tyler.

On his phone, it shows a miniature body, see-through, with different layers Tyler would need to click on to see each separate body system.

J’s fingertip trembles as it points at his head on the phone screen. “Maybe click that?”

Tyler does.

Tyler’s still smiling. “This is so cool. Okay… I think I can do a little… reset…? Are you okay with that? I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Let’s hope it’s like blowing air into a game cartridge.”

“If I lose you, I want to thank you for everything.” Tyler nods, short. “I don’t think I could have gone this far without you.”

“Hey, same here.”

“Hold my hand.”

“Hold my hand.”

Thumb an inch above the refresh option, Tyler glances at J before lowering it, pressing the tip against the screen, pressing the button, and waits.

He watches.

J slowly blinks.

J touches his forehead.

“Really do think these things”—he shrugs, upwards toward the earpieces—“just blew air into my head.”

“Are you in pain?”

“No. It was really weird. What else can you do?”

“Looks like it could just be used for diagnostic tests. Small tune-ups before seeing a doctor?”

It’s warm in here, the fog slowly dissipating from the mirror. At the nape of J’s neck, his hair curls toward his ears. Dark and dripping, J didn’t bother drying off that well.

“Here,” Tyler says.

With one hand, Tyler kills the apps on his phone and tucks it in the waistband of his shorts. In a swooping gesture, he plucks his towel from the floor, gives it a shake, and wraps a corner around his fist. He dries off J, small dabs of soft cloth to pale skin, unmarked skin. Tyler finds his eyes straying toward J’s chest, over to J’s right arm.

There’s that twinge in his stomach again, a reappearance so daring it forces Tyler to squeeze his eyes shut from how hard it rattles him.

“Do you need some air blown in your ears?” J teases. He’s close, closer still as he continues to lean in, to tilt his head to the side. Quickly, over before Tyler can open his eyes, J presses his lips to the curve of Tyler’s ear, and blows. A slow stream, a warm stream to match the temperature of the room, it brings the hair on Tyler’s arms to an end.

Remaining close by, J fumbles with the devices in his ears and stretches to drop them on the sink counter, reaching behind Tyler, his shoulder against Tyler’s shoulder.

Tyler busies himself with folding the towel in his hands. “Clothes are in the bedroom. I tried to leave the bigger clothes for you, but… there wasn’t much of a difference.”

“Thank you.”

And he leaves.

Tyler can breathe a little easier. Balancing on a leg, Tyler sends his foot into the bathroom door, kicking it closed. Before he forgets, Tyler sets his phone on the sink counter, with the earpieces, and pushes up the toilet lid.

From the bedroom, J calls, “Bring those things in here when you’re done. I want to see something.”

“Got it!”

Tyler thinks being able to hold in bodily functions is a perk to being not-so human.

He thinks the piss that leaves his urethra is mixed with oil.

Phone in hand and earpieces hooked on his fingers, Tyler keeps the door cracked on his way back into their room. Stray drops of water drip from the showerhead. The impact against the tub floor resembles a heartbeat. It becomes muted by the time Tyler joins J on the bed.

Covers already pushed away, the lamp on the nightstand switched on, J lies on his stomach with his head propped by his arm. His own phone rests before him, on a pillow. He scrolls, confusion prominent in the way he gazes at the screen. Their bag slumps next to the nightstand, the juice boxes next to that. An open juice box is on the nightstand, the straw bendy, the straw already chewed on by white, white teeth.

“Hey,” J says, shooting a smile at Tyler. “We’re spoiled with this mattress size.”

Tyler gets into bed, sticking his legs under the blankets. “Why’d you want these?”

J takes the earpieces and places them into his ears. “Just wanted to see it for myself. Show me what you did, dude?”

“Go to your Wi-Fi networks.”

Turning onto his stomach, too, Tyler wraps himself in the blankets, only passing some off to J when J narrows his eyes. J laughs, and Tyler laughs as he snatches the juice box from the nightstand. He sips and directs J. J panics when his screen goes black with the binary code, but Tyler rubs his arm and tells him it’s supposed to do that.

Giving the juice to J, Tyler rests his head on a pillow and closes his eyes. They don’t stay closed for long. He stares at J, can’t stop staring at him. Like their first night together, albeit with J conscious now, Tyler can’t comprehend how J’s face is the most beautiful face he has ever seen.

“Check this out.” J scoots closer. “I can see how long it’s been since I last slept—also my oil levels. You’d think I should be able to look inside my head, right? My memories, maybe? That’d be too easy, I think. If we could access our memories like this, then we could erase entire events. As much as I don’t like some of the things that happened, I could never bring myself to forget them.”

Tyler closes his eyes. They don’t stay closed for long.

“If your memory ever comes back to you,” J says, taking the devices from his ears and placing them on the nightstand next to the now empty juice box, “I hope it returns in a kinder way than it did for me.” His phone goes on the nightstand next, as does Tyler’s phone when Tyler hands it to him.

“Yeah?” Tyler settles on his side, hiding the lower half of his face with the blankets.

“By touch,” J starts, moving onto his side, sharing the pillow with Tyler, their knees touching. J’s shorts are longer. J’s shirt doesn’t have sleeves. “I remembered their touches before their faces. In retrospect, it could only be remembered in that way. Their hands, their lips… I woke this afternoon and felt them on my skin. I was on fire. It was so… hot.”

“You’re not from their sensitive department, whatever that means,” Tyler remarks, “but I think you’re sensitive enough, to be doing what you do.”

“I’m too nice. I bought too many flowers. I cried too much. Nobody likes it when you’re in bed with someone and they start sobbing for no foreseeable reason.”

J blinks. His eyes are shiny. “I wasn’t in the real world for very long. I only just recently realized I’m not an actual human being. But I thought I was. I had an apartment. There was a dog in my neighborhood who would greet me every morning when I went to check the mail. I had friends. I had clients who paid well. Most were human, but there were some who were synthetic, like us.”

“How is it like?” Tyler asks, quietly.

J doesn’t hear. “That girl we visited, who made our IDs, she said she met the person she was modeled after. They wouldn’t claim it, obviously, but… do you think there’s someone like me out there? We’d have differences, I’d expect. She said their eyes were different, fuller lips, skinnier—would the person I’m based off of have the same facial features as me? Would their nose be different? My nose has this bump from where I broke it against that wall. I hope whoever they are, their nose isn’t like mine.”

“Shut up. Your nose is fine.”

“You think so, bro?”

“I know so.”

And slowly, J smiles. It’s bashful. He takes the blanket from Tyler’s face to hide his own. He giggles. It’s muffled.

To regain control, Tyler splits the blanket share in half, both of their noses and mouths covered, both of their laughs muffled.

J’s eyes are shiny. J’s eyes are closing, closing, and Tyler opens his mouth and tries again. “How is it like?”

“How’s what like?”

“Having sex with a human.”

J opens his eyes and doesn’t laugh. He frees his mouth from the blanket. “In my experience, it’s the same as sleeping with a synthetic human. When you’re under the blankets or against a wall, pheromones in the air and struggling to find a grip on sweat-slick skin, it’s difficult to tell the difference between mouths and fingers and genitalia. I finish faster when I’m with a synthetic person. We have more erogenous zones, and what erogenous zones we share with humans, they’re… enhanced. So, we can… exploit that.”

“Where?” Tyler’s cheeks burn.

“They’re small, not really too important. They’re just sensitive to humans.” J raises onto an elbow. He looms over Tyler, Tyler rolling onto his back, Tyler looking up at J. “Our sides and the backs of our thighs have more receptors in them. Something as meaningless as a pat on the back or a touch on the shoulder can send waves through you.”

“I think all those receptors got put into my head because I don’t think I’ve ever reacted in that way before.”

“You can’t do it to yourself.”

“I wasn’t.”

“See, here…” J’s voice wavers in favor of him scooting closer, no space between them. Placing his arm on the other side of Tyler, their chests together, his left leg slipping between Tyler’s legs as Tyler’s left leg nestles between J’s, J shifts his weight, and Tyler slides his foot along the bedsheets in order to keep J where he’s stationed.

On top of Tyler, Tyler’s thigh against the curve of his bottom, J is momentarily immobilized, dazed. When he recovers, he stares at Tyler, lips parting, lips trembling. No words surface. He begins to cry.

Tyler’s eyes widen, and he immediately lowers his leg to the safety of the sheets. “O-oh, God, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me, I—”

J pushes himself onto his hands and knees. Swinging his leg, he now sits on his legs between Tyler’s own spread ones. The blankets fall behind J, but nobody needs them right now.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Tyler says. “I just did what I thought was… natural.”

“Do you remember?” J asks, out of the blue.

Tyler frowns. “Um.”

J goes on. “I don’t know if the memories I’m remembering are my own, fabricated by some sick means, or if, if, if the knock on my head shook the cobwebs off a part of my brain I wasn’t supposed to access.”

“I don’t know what—”

“It’s okay that you don’t. Maybe that’s not your purpose.” J slowly leans forward, bracing himself above Tyler again. And slowly, he begins to lower himself, his mouth, until his lips wrap around a piece of skin on Tyler’s collarbone.

“Maybe that isn’t your purpose anymore,” J whispers, as he runs his fingertips down Tyler’s sides to grab at the backs of Tyler’s thighs.

Tyler’s breath catches in his throat. “I’m sensitive,” he whispers.

J cracks a smile. “I’ll show you sensitive.”

Tyler expects thick, black oil will leave his mouth when J kisses him. The beating in his chest is fast enough, and Tyler feels numb all over. He’s shaking as he forces himself to become more than a discarded doll. He runs his fingers through J’s hair, fingers connecting at the base of J’s skull. Tyler pulls him in closer. J’s fingers are like butterflies as they roam under Tyler’s shirt. A stroke here and a stroke there, Tyler arches his back and fights to keep J’s mouth on his. Sloppy, a line of saliva connecting them, Tyler watches it lengthen and collect against his neck, J suckling there, J biting there.

It’s sharp, tiny convulses. Tyler lifts his feet from the bed, resting fully on his back once more. He needs to talk, but he fears only gibberish will come out. Instead, he watches, skittish when it comes to J rubbing his nipples and sinking a bite into the t-shirt above his left pectoral.

“Ah,” Tyler says.

J looks at him.

Tyler blushes. “I don’t know if I’m close, but it feels like I am.”

“You’re shivering.”

“Get off me. Gimme the blanket.”

J does that, and he switches off the lamp.

The darkness is comforting.

The blanket is comforting.

Tyler is the one on top now, taking J’s head in his hands like the first night in the dumpster. He kisses J. It’s not a first kiss by any means. Yet, Tyler acts as if it is. Fire burns inside of him. He set it himself with his thumbnails and the gentle rocking of his hips. Nestled under the covers with J, Tyler almost thinks he could stay like this forever, just their lips and tongue providing the sustenance they require.

J begins to nip at Tyler’s lips, his own hands finding their way beneath Tyler’s shirt once more. The very tips of his nails rake down Tyler’s back. Not hurtful in any way, the gesture is more of a massage. Fish swim in Tyler’s gut. They do flips and tricks nobody has seen done in a million and one years. J controls them, ropes them into a line of excitable entrails.

“Right there,” he says, because only now does Tyler notice the way he’s moving on J’s hips. A slow rocking motion, Tyler places his forearms on either side of J’s head, a slight mimic, and does not waste a breath when it comes to bringing his hips up and bringing them back down.

Hands up Tyler’s shirt, J repeats, “Right there, right there,” and kisses Tyler’s top lip. It isn’t anything.

It’s everything.

Tyler says, “I want to try something.”

He slides down J’s body and hides below the covers.

J doesn’t need to see.

Tyler doesn’t want J to see.

He worms his way inside J’s shorts, up the legs and up J’s thighs. He feels the warmth, and he feels the possibility. And he keeps reaching up until he hits coarse hair, and he tells himself to back out, to pull away, and J’s breathing is heavier now. He’s eager to help Tyler. He undresses himself, shimmying out of his shorts and letting them come to a rest on the carpet.

He does this in darkness.

He draws Tyler out with his voice. “I have to tell you something.”

But Tyler is vulgar. Tyler needs and wants, and he will, he will—

“After,” he promises, “please, J, I—”

And J nods.

And Tyler snuggles under the blanket and finds it’s easy to inch a cock down his throat.

His technique is not one deserving of a boast. Head bobbing and spending too much time on the tip with too much saliva under his tongue, no matter how awful he may be in retrospect, J thinks the world of him. The fingers in Tyler’s hair are kind, and they do little else. If there’s one thing Tyler can remember, it’s that J is the type of guy to purchase a flower shop instead of a bouquet.

It’s hard to breathe down here, and Tyler finds it has become more difficult to maintain a decent grip on J’s hips. He’s clawing at J’s skin, nails finding their way inside as he pulls, shoves, holds down, down, down.

Tyler begins rocking again, one leg bent as one remains stretched out. Slow and not at all steady, Tyler applies pressure to the mattress, to the sheets, his hips rolling. A little stuttered, Tyler brings himself to the edge as J nears the edge. And as J nears the edge, Tyler could not experience a greater warmth than he experiences right now, nestled between J’s legs with what may be an oil spill.

He swallows all he can, J apologizing profusely regardless of Tyler’s actions. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you I was about to—”

Tyler shakes it off. “No, shut your mouth. It’s not—you’re fine. You’re fine.”

A beat of silence passes before J slowly nods. “Do you need…?”

“I… um…”

J makes toward their bag. “Happens to us all at least once.”

“Wasn’t expecting it.”

“I think it’s cute, to tell you the truth. Sort of empowering to make someone orgasm mostly untouched.”

Pretending to be mad is cute, too, apparently, because J laughs at him. “Yeah. I know.”

Tyler stands from the bed, stands in front of J.

They dress quietly.

“It’s non-toxic,” J says, letting Tyler climb into bed first. “You know, for humans.”

“I tasted oil mixed in with it.”

J welcomes Tyler into his arms. “Like I said, it’s non-toxic.”

“Can we get pregnant? Or impregnate someone?”

“I don’t think so.” J buries his face into Tyler’s hair.

“What did you have to tell me?”

J takes so long to answer Tyler thinks he might have fallen asleep, or he might have tried to ignore Tyler. Should he repeat himself? Should he let it go?

J hugs Tyler and doesn’t let go.

“My name’s Josh.”

Tyler’s vision goes fuzzy.

He can’t see a thing.

So, he closes his eyes.

Voice low, a touch above a whisper, he asks, “How is it like, Josh?”

“How is what like, Tyler?”

“Being able to live your own life.”

If Tyler were to raise his head, he’d be able to see the tears in J’s eyes, in Josh’s eyes. But he doesn’t raise his head. He can hear the tears in J’s tone, in Josh’s tone. Thick, complemented with a sniff and a shovel of mucus down his throat, J, J, Josh cradles Tyler’s head, Tyler’s cheek to his chest, Tyler’s ear to his heart, and says, “I was happy.”

Sometimes, Josh’s heart beats irregularly. Sometimes, Josh’s fingers grow cold against Tyler’s scalp.

Sometimes, Tyler is full of fear.

“Do you think that could be my purpose?” Tyler sets his hand on Josh’s hip, uncovered, sharp.

“Being happy? Yes. I think it can.”

“I’m happy right now.”

“Hold on to that.”

Tyler smiles. “I will.”

Tyler almost doesn’t want to remember who he is or who he’s supposed to be. He’s content here, lying on Josh and listening to a heart beat out of time.

*

Josh wakes with sharp pains again. This time, it manifests itself in his hands. After hearing Josh whimper inches from his ear, Tyler doesn’t think he’ll be able to fall back asleep anytime soon.

“L-let’s see if—please, could you keep it down?”

With the curtains drawn, it’s nearly impossible to tell what time it is, but going by how groggy Tyler feels, it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe it’s morning. If it’s morning, they need to be quiet. Josh needs to be quiet.

Tyler repeats himself. “Please, I know it hurts, but I don’t want to get a noise complaint.”

“Do something.”

“I’m trying—I’m trying.”

Doing whatever seems right at the moment, Tyler grabs the earpieces and his phone from the nightstand. He pushes them into Josh’s ears and connects his phone to their network.

Josh is crying by now, cradling his hands to his chest.

“Hold on for me. Just a little more.” Tyler moves his phone to his right hand so he can place his left on Josh’s chest, next to his curling fingers. He takes them, squeezes them, and Josh has a brief pause from pain.

Tyler presses the hands on the miniature model on his phone screen once the initial diagnostic test passes. No new options show up. Tyler gives Josh a weak smile as he taps the reset button.

Josh takes in a slow, deep breath. “Blew air into my ears again.”

“That it?”

“My hands burn.”

“Can you move them? Try to hold my hand.”

Unsuccessful on first attempt, Josh’s grip is strong, akin to rigor mortis, but when he relaxes, his hands move with no pain, only the smallest amount of numbness. He’s touching Tyler’s hands, and he’s touching Tyler’s shoulders. Tyler joins in. Josh’s forehead catches him. Josh touches Tyler’s neck now, the sides of his head, and Tyler chances it as he purses his lips and kisses Josh.

Josh’s reaction is immediate. “Butterflies,” he says quietly, and smiles.

Tyler kisses Josh’s nose, not needing to look at his phone as he swipes away his apps. He climbs on top of Josh’s hips to return his phone to the nightstand.

He does it because he can.

He removes the earpieces next and hopes they can hold a charge for weeks, for months.

Josh pulls Tyler in for another kiss. The mumbling that leaves his lips tickles. “Hey, dude, I have some good news.”

Tyler plants a kiss on Josh’s throat. He answers with a hum.

“Figured out something pretty important.” His hand comes around to mold against the back of Tyler’s neck, holding him in comfort, holding him in place.

“Promise you won’t get mad,” he adds.

“Why would I get mad?”

“Just promise me.”

Tyler wiggles his way into finding Josh’s pinky. Still linked, he says, “What’s all this about?”

Still linked, unable to maintain eye contact, Josh speaks to the closed curtains. “I told you before my initials were JWD—Joshua William Dun. But that’s not my name. It can’t be my name. When I think of my name, that’s not it.”

“You did tell me you thought there was another J in there somewhere,” Tyler reminds him.

“That’s what I figured out. I figured out what it was.”

Josh’s pinky tightly coils around Tyler’s.

Josh says, “My name is Josh Joseph.”

Tyler blinks.

“I don’t know why it feels right, but it does and—”

“You’re lying.”

Josh freezes. “Excuse me?”

Tyler’s lips quirk into a frown. Starting slow, he frowns until it hurts to frown. Everything hurts when he hears Josh say his name, when he stares at Josh, when he watches Josh sport his own frown. “Is there something wrong?” Josh asks.

“That can’t be your name,” Tyler says. “That’s my name.”

“That’s not your name. Your name is Tyler Joseph.”

“Joseph,” Tyler hisses.

“Yes…”

“That’s mine. You can’t have that. We can’t have the same name.”

“Why not?”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” He’s screaming. It feels like he’s screaming. His throat aches.

Josh waves his hands in front of Tyler’s face, not touching, not touching him anymore. “Tyler, please keep it down. Why would it bother me?”

“Someone else has your name. Why shouldn’t that bother you?”

He’s screaming again, too close to Josh, right in Josh’s face.

There’s knocking on their door.

And Josh launches himself at Tyler, sitting on his chest, covering his mouth. “Sorry!” he says to the door. “Bad dream!”

Tyler may have jeopardized this for them. He’s expecting to start seizing. He’s expecting thick, black oil to pool from his mouth.

He’s expecting his heart to give out.

Nothing like that happens.

Josh remains on his chest, his forearm against his mouth, his eyes narrowed as he looks into Tyler’s eyes.

Tyler’s crying.

Josh slowly peels away his arm.

“Why shouldn’t that bother you?” Tyler repeats, his voice hoarse.

“Because it’s just a fucking name,” Josh sighs. He drops his head onto Tyler’s shoulder. “A name doesn’t make you. You make the name. So what if someone has the same name as you? It’s just a name.”

“But you aren’t special.” Tyler closes his eyes. He’s shivering. Josh pulls at the blankets. “How are we meant to live our lives if our lives have already been lived a million times before? None of us is special, and I think that hurts the most.”

“No, do you know what hurts the most?”

Tyler opens his eyes.

Josh leans forward, too close to Tyler, right in Tyler’s face. “That you think any of this matters.”

Josh is tired of being nice.

Josh’s last name may not be “Joseph.”

Tyler cries.

Josh leaves the bed to go into the bathroom. The door doesn’t close fully when he swings his arm around to shut it. He doesn’t come out right away.

Tyler presses his face into the pillow.

Josh’s last name may be “Joseph.”

The toilet flushes.

Tyler wipes away the tears.

Josh emerges, blazing. “I thought you’d be happy.”

Tyler drops his head onto the pillow.

“Okay, my second thought was that you’d be happy. First thought was anger, and you promised you wouldn’t get mad.”

“If you knew I’d get upset, then you shouldn’t have told me at all.”

“But I thought you’d be happy!”

“Why?!” Tyler throws the blankets off his body, sitting upright and showing his palms to the ceiling. “You took my name! You honestly thought I’d be thrilled to hear that?!”

Being nice is exhausting. “I just fucking told you, Tyler. Your name doesn’t matter! It’s—”

“My name is all I have! I don’t have anything else! You have your memories! You didn’t have to take my name!”

During this, Josh marches around the room, their bag in his arms as he pulls out article of clothing after article of clothing. He’s quiet. He’s fuming.

There’s another knock on the door.

Josh dresses quickly, mismatched and blue. Phone dropping into a pocket, baseball cap pulled on his head, he shoves his finger at Tyler as if it could split air. “I never stole your name. You gave it to me. You shared it with me. It’s not my fault you can’t fucking remember it.”

With that, he’s opening the door, assuring the person in the hallway they’re okay, they just had a little disagreement, and then the door closes, and Tyler is left with pillow stains and a rapid flutter in his chest.

*

To provide the illusion he’s more content than what he’s letting on, Tyler parts the curtains to allow sunlight to flood the carpet and drinks two juice boxes. He isn’t hungry. He doesn’t know what hunger feels like. Maybe they forgot to turn that on for him.

Tyler takes another shower and brushes his teeth. He dresses in clean clothes, clothes that Josh threw around the room in his own attempt at finding something to wear. Josh picked out a blue t-shirt and sweats. Tyler wears blue, too, another jumpsuit, this one shorter—a romper, romper. Tyler can remember that.

He gingerly presses on the earpieces and navigates through what he can. Unsure as to what else he can do with these and a smartphone, Tyler does what he only knows how to do: he refreshes, resets, reboots. Not a hard reboot, not restoring to factory settings, Tyler clicks on each body part, starting with his feet, and resets everything.

Air blows into his head at each reset.

His feet itch. His calves sting. His knees pop. His thighs shudder. His abdomen growls. His chest throbs. His hands burn. His arms freeze. His neck cracks. His head screeches.

And he taps on the head of the miniature body on his phone screen and resets. He resets again and again and again and—

Josh finds him like this.

Josh finds him atop the bed, tears down his face, almost mechanical in movement. Tap, tap, tap, Tyler doesn’t notice Josh has returned, and he doesn’t notice Josh has returned with food and the softest smile on his face.

And at first, Josh doesn’t realize Tyler’s stare when he entered the room. That smile on his face, two boxes of personal pan pizzas under his arm, he walks into the room, closes the door, and says, “Hey, hope you’re hungry. Just got cheese.”

It’s when he turns around to set the pizza on the bed he sees Tyler—really sees Tyler. While the pizza does go on the bed, Josh goes on it, too, climbing, ripping Tyler’s phone from his hand.

Tyler’s thumb twitches.

Josh turns off Tyler’s phone and takes the devices from Tyler’s ears. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“You’re fine,” Tyler replies, and shakes his head. “I mean… you don’t need to apologize.”

Even pressure, Josh swipes the pads of his thumbs under Tyler’s eyes. He’s done this before. Nothing has changed. Nothing is ever new.

“I tried to see if it’d bring back my memory.”

Josh shifts around on the bed. He sheds his shoes, socks, the hat on his head. “Did it?” he asks, feigning interest, actually showing genuine interest. Wide eyes, brows raised, part in his lips, Tyler notes all as evidence of genuine interest.

“No, it didn’t.” Tyler looks down at his fingers, picking at a cuticle. “Just gave me a headache. Feels like I’m underwater or something…”

“Don’t worry too much about it,” Josh says, and slides over a pizza box toward Tyler. “You don’t need those memories. You can make new ones, starting now.”

“Says the guy who remembers who he is.”

Josh frowns. “I don’t. I’m not—look, Tyler. I’m just a sex toy. Having a memory from before that isn’t necessary. I know I’m synthetic, and I suspect I have a borrowed face, but that doesn’t bother me. Do you know why?”

Tyler flips the lid of his pizza box. Four slices of greasy cheese say hello.

“Because that wasn’t me,” Josh continues.

“But you said you’re starting to remember some memories that aren’t really yours. Could that be the real Josh coming out?”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Tyler,” Josh says, with a mouthful of pizza and fumbling for the remote to the TV. “I’m not supposed to remember shit like that. They program me with the latest sexual positions and preferences, and I go in for upgrades when needed. I don’t need some poor bastard’s old memories to function.”

“That was probably your malfunction.”

“I cried too much—that was my malfunction.”

“Maybe the real Josh cried too much.”

“Shut up, Tyler! I’m Josh. I’m the real Josh, so shut the hell up.”

Satisfied to some degree, Tyler rips into his own pizza, never minding the grease spilling down his chin at first bite. “You’re scared.”

“I’m terrified, okay? But I’m not… I…” Josh narrows his eyes. “This is about you not having a memory. Not about me… having one.”

Tyler smirks. “Maybe I’m supposed to be the sex toy.”

Josh nudges him. “Shut up. No. You’re definitely not. They threw you out because you couldn’t remember, and that’s vital to what you are.”

Munching into the crust of his pizza, it’s Tyler’s turn to become dubious. “Wow, sure wish I could—” He tosses his hand at the television, his other hitting Josh in the face. Crust hanging from his mouth, contained to his cheek, Tyler waves his hand and shouts, “She’s right there.”

Josh bats Tyler’s hands from his face. “Who are you talking about?”

“Her.”

The commercial on the screen rolls, featuring the all-too-familiar doctor, the head, the boss. Tall, blonde hair, white coat, bright smile, and a faux considerate attitude, she offers the audience a parting wave before the screen fades to a sky-blue color with white lettering and her providing the voiceover.

In a tone reminiscent of a time where Tyler was in recovery from his heart surgery, she says, “We’re Crystal Clear Institutes, where our mission is crystal clear.”

A show about hellish cats starts to play.

Tyler’s hand is still up, his fingers pointing at the TV, eyes as wide as they could possibly get without doing harm. They do harm when it comes to what’s inside. Tyler stares at the screen, and he replays the commercial in his head. Over and over, over and over, Tyler shuts his eyes, curls his fingers.

He lets the pizza crust fall from his mouth and land in the box on his lap.

Josh looks from the television to Tyler. He’s stopped eating, has three slices left. He doesn’t understand. He says, “Do you… not know anything about where you came from?”

“I-I know basic stuff. She told me they could… they could cure the common cold and other things…”

“But you didn’t know their name?”

Tyler bows his head.

“That was stupid of me. I’m sorry.”

Tyler bites into another slice of pizza.

“So,” Josh says, popping his thumb into his mouth, “you really don’t know what you are.”

“Of course, I don’t!” Tyler throws up a hand, crumbs on his fingers. “Why would I lie? What do I possibly gain from lying?”

Josh throws his hands up, too. “I dunno! I just thought you were being cute when you kept calling it ‘sensitive.’”

“Thanks, but I really don’t know what I am, Josh. All I know is I’m not human. Like, she told me the thing about the sex toys, and she also said they’re, like, they’re the best for human companionship, so I… I—okay, there was this guy who drove us to the clinic, and he said his wife was synthetic, but she wasn’t ‘specially made.’ Does that mean—what are you doing?”

Between scoffing down his pizza and flipping the television on mute, Josh falls onto his stomach and drags out his phone. He types with his ring finger, his pointer one greasy. “Nothin’.”

“Not doing nothin’.”

“Just eat your pizza.”

Tyler does. Most of the second slice is gone by the time Josh finds whatever preoccupied his attention. Keeping to his stomach, pulling his pizza box by the lid to rest in front of him, Josh leans his phone against a pillow and draws Tyler in with a nod of his head. He doesn’t say anything, just presses the play button on the video loaded onto his phone once Tyler scoots closer. Not turning onto his stomach just yet, Tyler absently eats his pizza as he watches.

She’s here again, center stage, the center of attention. A ringleader, the puppeteer, she smiles and holds her hands in front of her body. Shoulders back, head tilted slightly, and an aura demanding attention, she speaks with authority and years spent perfecting the ability to appear kind when demons rage behind generous eyes and relaxed lips.

Tyler’s blood boils at the sight of her.

“Hello!” she starts. “I hope you’re having a good day. The purpose of this video series is to show you, our beloved customers, our latest project. There have been talk and nasty rumors about our reasoning behind such experimentation, but I’m here to tell you there is nothing to worry about.

“So, let me introduce you to… well… me.” The camera pans out, stretching the viewer’s vision to contain the synthetic person next to her. Completely identical, save for the part in their hair, they blink and smile and wave at the camera. The doctor talks again.

“Here at Crystal Clear Institutes, we’ve managed to eradicate and perform extraordinary things. This project is just the beginning of another extraordinary thing. Now, before we go on, I would like to dispel any chitchat we’ve heard from the airwaves.

“First of all, you are not in danger. We do not program them with enough intelligence to overthrow households or the government.”

The synthetic version of her takes over. “While we do have personalities of our own, we can also be programmed to do many things, but that’ll be included in another video. We are carbon copies, made of life-like skin, blood, organs; we can even use the bathroom like you! The only difference between her and me”—a shoulder nudge—“is I require regular tune-ups and the consumption of oil to function properly. Everything in our body is mixed with non-toxic oil! That way, you’ll know we’re just big machines.” The smile on her face is void of emotion.

The doctor waves her hand, and somehow remotely, the synthetic version of herself shuts her eyes and slumps forward. It doesn’t matter what they’re going to do with her. The camera returns to the doctor and the position it held at the beginning of the video. “Human companionship,” she says, “it’s what we all crave. With our synthetic individuals, we hope to fulfill that need for companionship with not just another human, but a synthetic human. You’re probably thinking, ‘Wow, isn’t this just a little weird? How will I be able to continue being the superior species with these things walking around?’ And once again, I’m here to tell you not to worry.

“We don’t send just any of our synthetic humans outside. Most, if not all of them, stay within our institution walls to aid us in fabricating the next generation. Our synthetic humans require extensive testing before they’re allowed into the workforce and their own homes, but I assure you, these are few and far between. The chances of us pushing out synthetic humans just for the hell of it are close to zero.”

A box appears on the screen—a correction. Josh pauses the video in order to read it aloud, the font too tiny for Tyler to see from his upright position. “As of today,” he says, providing a current date, “Crystal Clear Institutes are now the number one provider of non-specialty synthetic humans, bringing their total number to fifteen public-consumed products per year.”

Tyler glares at Josh’s phone.

“In our next video,” she continues, “we’re going to look more in depth into our main concern when we say ‘human companionship.’” She winks.

Josh rolls his eyes.

“So, remember, we’re Crystal Clear Institutes, where our mission is crystal clear.”

Tyler chews the rest of his pizza crust.

Josh loads the next video as he reaches to grab a juice box. He tosses one to Tyler.

“Is this video,” Tyler quietly remarks, “about people like you?”

“I think so,” Josh says.

It opens with the same sky-blue background and her in the middle of the screen again. A man stands beside her, brown skin, a ring through his lip and rubbing his chin with manicured nails. He smiles, but like her counterpart in the previous video, his eyes lack the emotion brought on by the shape of his lips.

She speaks first. “In this video, we discuss the possibility of our synthetic humans in the form of companionship. My friend here will tell you all about it.”

The camera focuses on him. He continues to smile. Tyler grows sick at the sight of it.

“Hello,” he says, waving his fingers. “You can call me O.”

Josh snorts.

“I am a synthetic human. I was made to satisfy the needs of all who have the means to obtain it. For the purposes of this video, I will be explicit. I am a prostitute, and due to the great minds at Crystal Clear Institutes, I am one of the best prostitutes in the business, as well as my co-workers. Because of Crystal Clear Institutes, we no longer have to suffer at the hands of sexually transmitted infections.”

“Did you know that?” Tyler asks, poking Josh in the side with his big toe.

To make Tyler feel better, Josh says, “No.”

O continues, “The oil in my body is safe to consume, and it is mixed with all of my bodily fluids. It tastes like pennies, but the taste is so minor you won’t be able to tell a difference. My genitalia is filled with sensors, which allow me to perform to my uttermost ability. I can control how much semen leaves my body, and we require little to no preparation when it comes to penetration, since our orifices thoroughly lubricate themselves. My erogenous zones are enhanced, and I have more erogenous zones than humans. While I do expel semen, at this time, I am unable to fertilize eggs. The synthetics who are made with vaginas are also unable to have their eggs fertilized.”

Another box pops onto the screen. Josh reads it aloud again. “At this current time, Crystal Clear Institutes are hard at work to allow their synthetic people to carry children. As of this year past, a zygote managed to form by both synthetic sperm and eggs in a lab, but when transferred to a synthetic womb, the synthetic human’s body quickly miscarried. No testing on whether non-synthetic humans could carry synthetic fetuses, or vice versa, have been performed.”

Tyler says, “Think those earpieces could help nausea?”

“Lie down. Take a deep breath.” Josh takes their pizza and empty juice boxes and pitches them in the bin by the bathroom door. Tyler stretches out, an arm behind his head, and lets Josh settle in the bend of his other arm. Despite Tyler being the one to need comfort, Tyler relishes in the act of cradling Josh.

On their backs, Josh rests his phone on his chest, his head leaned against Tyler’s shoulder, and taps the screen to play the video.

O’s eyes seem deader, dark, no shine to them. “I am made to have sex. I am made to keep my clients happy. I will leave only after you are satisfied. I, and many of my co-workers, do not shy away from specific genders or actions or preferences in the bedroom. We are programmed to do whatever you like. We can’t say no—not that we would want to in the first place.” And he smiles, and Tyler has to close his eyes to avoid looking.

She slides into frame again. She knows how to fake a realistic smile. “Now, you’re probably wondering: ‘if I call these services, will I see the face of my neighbor or my sister when I open the front door?’ I’m here to tell you your fears are completely unfounded. Our artists sketch whatever is in their mind, and then we run it through our database to make sure it doesn’t match any other person. Lookalikes are not what we are trying to achieve here. No, the lookalikes will be explained in our next video.

“Until next time,” she says, and O joins her in this. “We’re Crystal Clear Institutes, where our mission is crystal clear.”

Josh and Tyler look at the black screen once the video ends.

Tyler wants to say something, but he can’t—can’t talk, can’t joke, all he can do is stare at Josh’s phone.

Josh wipes the corner of his eye. He loads the next video.

She’s here. She’s alone, wearing a frown. Sullen bleeds throughout the video, from the slightly darker shade of blue of the background and her wearing a black turtleneck rather than her usual white coat. It appears almost forced.

“Today, we will discuss death.”

Tyler absently pulls Josh closer.

“Death isn’t a happy discussion, I know. However, it’s a necessary one, and we need to remember that when we go to bed each night or when we gaze at our children or our spouses. What if something were to happen to us next week? What about tomorrow? Tragedies can occur at any moment, and here at Crystal Clear Institutes, we want to give you and your family a second chance.”

Tyler smacks his hand over his mouth.

Josh pauses the video. “What is it?”

Tyler is monotone, robotic. He stares at the middle ground as he recites, “‘You’re nothing more than a brutal reminder that some people in this world do not deserve a second chance.’”

“Did she… did she tell you that?”

When Tyler nods, Josh presses into Tyler’s side, his phone on Tyler’s stomach now, kissing Tyler’s neck now. “Do you want to still watch this?”

“Yes.”

They continue.

“Death is a sensitive subject,” she says, her fingertips pressing together in a steeple formation. “That’s why we refer to this department as our ‘sensitive department.’ We’ve made it easy to set up an appointment with any of our clinics around the country. You don’t have to wait until it’s too late. Here’s how it works.

“Because of our attitude toward death, we solely accept applications of people who are terminally ill, but whatever your situation, everybody gets the opportunity to fill out an application. Our specialized doctors on site decide right there if you’re a suitable candidate. If you’re chosen, the next round begins. This is brief. We take your blood. That’s all! Our technology has advanced so much we can detect everything about you from a drop of your blood—the way you look, the way you think, the way you feel, that’s all in your blood. We take your blood, and for good measure, some pictures, and then we begin the process of creating your doppelgänger.

“Despite how far we’ve come, this can take a while, and even we, as brilliant as we are, make mistakes from time to time. Check your insurance provider before beginning your second chance.

“After we make the synthetic equivalent of you, we do extensive screening to ensure this version of you is one-hundred percent you. When the testing is completed, we put your synthetic other into hibernation until that fateful day comes. And when that fateful day comes, we wake up the synthetic you and let you know it’s okay to go home. It’s simple and without injury. Your family doesn’t have to forget your face because you’re going to be right on their doorstep with all your human memories intact. It’s as if you never died.

“For tragedies, we do allow grieving family members to make emergency arrangements, and those have priority above anything else. We can’t have a pair of young parents crying over their child they lost in a terrible car accident the day before.

“Our synthetic second chances age like we do, so you never have to worry about your spouse growing old alone. They are ready to step into society and serve their purpose. Don’t skip out on those checkups, though! You’re still not fully human, and you need as much help as you can get. If you think there’s something amiss, whether it’s to do with yourself or your spouse or family member, you can always drop by our main institution here in Columbus, and we’ll take a look, free of charge. After all, we don’t get a third chance at life.”

She has the audacity to wink.

Tyler doesn’t breathe.

“Until next time,” she says, chipper, the background lifting to become as blue as the sky, “we’re Crystal Clear Institutes, where our mission is—”

Josh shuts it off before she can finish.

Without a moment of silence, without a moment to relearn how to breathe, Josh shoves his phone under a pillow and switches their positions. It’s easy. He gathers Tyler into his arms, and Tyler welcomes it. He needs to welcome it. He needs it. He needs it.

“I’m here, baby,” Josh whispers. “Oh, Tyler, you don’t need to cry, okay? I—okay, it’s okay to cry. You can cry.”

Tyler didn’t know he was crying.

But he’s crying.

Josh’s lips are wet against his ear.

Tyler says, “I always knew… I always knew…”

“Your memory’s there. It’s there, in your subconscious. It’s there.”

“I was married…”

“That’s it. That’s it. I’m here. I’m right here. It’s all right.”

Their lips connect, sloppy. Tyler’s uncoordinated. Josh is coaxing, fingers under clothes, hugging him, squeezing him.

Tyler hides his face in Josh’s neck. It’s warm here. Josh is right here. Josh will always be here.

“We’ll leave tomorrow,” Josh says, rubbing Tyler’s shoulder.

“Where will we go?”

Josh has no answer.

Tyler thinks that’s okay.

“Need the alphabet?” Josh cups the back of Tyler’s neck.

“You start, bro.”

“Alpha,” Josh says, and rubs his thumb into Tyler’s neck.

No response, tittering on the precipice of nothingness, Tyler feels himself drool on Josh’s clavicle.

Josh states the alphabet because he knows it helps Tyler. It’s because he wants Tyler to fall asleep.

It’s because he’s infatuated.

Tyler falls asleep to the whisper of “Juliet.”

*

He dreams of golden rings and doves against clouds again.

He doesn’t wake up crying this time.

Josh does, though. Josh weeps. He tries to stifle it, but Tyler wakes to Josh’s stuttered breathing.

Tyler reaches blindly for his phone and the earpieces. “What hurts? Tell me what hurts.”

“M-my head. It—I can’t—I—”

Tyler slides over, tucking his legs beneath him as he leans over Josh and sets the earpieces in place. “Don’t need to talk. I’m going to make it better.”

“I—can’t—see.”

Shaking his head, his phone shaking in his hand, Tyler repeats, “I’m going to make it better.”

When it comes to Josh’s sight, the pain makes it nearly impossible for Josh to keep his eyes open. Despite this, they leak a color a little darker than Tyler would like it to be right now. He quickly wipes it away. “I’m going to make it better,” he says, and hits the reset button.

A hiccup, Josh furiously bends his knees to the ceiling, his toes curling into the bedsheets. “It hurts so bad, Tyler.”

Tyler blinks. He presses the reset button again.

No luck—Josh groans.

Tyler worries this is his fault. He drained the batteries yesterday. He must have, he must have—

“Josh, I’m trying. I… Josh, I’m sorry.”

Checking the earpieces’ battery life is a feature on the app. Tyler engages with it with little hesitation. Seeing the battery is a little more than halfway depleted only makes Tyler’s nerves and anxiety levels soar through the roof. He glances at Josh, calculating any sort of reaction on Josh’s face as he taps the reset button for a third time.

A lip twitch, a fresh tear rolling down his cheek, Josh mouths something. He kicks out his feet. “It’s—”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Tyler pushes his hands into his hair and pulls.

“No, dude, it got better. It got better.”

“Did it?”

“It’s dull now. Stabbing. I need to breathe. Need to rest.”

Tyler returns the earpieces to the nightstand, his phone joining it. “Want me to do anything?” After pulling Josh’s phone from under a pillow, Tyler stands from the bed and picks their bag from the floor. Down at the bottom, tangled together, Tyler takes a seat at the edge of the bed and works on untangling the phone chargers.

“Could you sing for me?”

Mind drawing a blank, Tyler lightly yanks on the end of one cord. “I can’t sing.”

“Yes, you can.”

No energy to argue with a man fighting a migraine, Tyler says, “Okay.” He says, “What do you want me to sing?” He sticks the plugs into the closest outlet and charges their phones. He wishes he could charge the earpieces. He wonders how they charge.

“Something that tells a story.”

Tyler looks outside before closing the curtains. The sun is about to set.

“You know,” Josh says, “something with narrative elements.”

“Yeah.” Tyler fixes the covers. Josh lies on his stomach. Open eyes, olive tear tracks, he focuses on Tyler and only Tyler. The pain in his head and now in his hands and hips, judging by the way he grimaced when he moved, is second to Tyler next to him, slouching and undoing the top button on his romper.

“You look good in blue,” Josh tells Tyler.

“Thank you.”

“Thought of a song yet?”

Tyler undoes the rest of the buttons on his romper. He sings, “We are two mariners—our ship’s sole survivors—in this belly of a whale.”

Josh closes his eyes. No pain lines his face.

“Its ribs are ceiling beams. Its guts are carpeting. I guess we have some time to kill.”

*

“There’s another song,” Tyler says. He pushes Josh’s hair off his forehead and watches the curls come loose and fan against unblemished skin.

“I don’t have any words for it yet. I hear it every time I go to bed. It rushes me, floods me. I think it’s in my blood.”

Josh whimpers in his sleep.

Tyler rubs Josh’s eyebrow. “I’ll sing you that song once I figure out the words.”

*

He doesn’t sleep well. He doesn’t sleep at all. Watching Josh, unable to keep himself from watching Josh, Tyler does more than play with Josh’s hair. Of course, he does that, but he also skims his fingertips along Josh’s arms, Josh’s neck—his neck; Tyler worries over Josh’s pulse.

Sometimes, it’s off. Sometimes, Tyler miscounts.

When a new day arrives, Josh rouses in little pain. He blinks slowly, lips wet from a quick swipe of his tongue, and scoots closer to Tyler. He’s warm. Tyler rubs Josh’s back.

“We need to leave,” Josh mumbles.

“Why can’t we stay?”

“Why would you want to stay?”

“Because I’m scared of what’s out there.”

“Don’t be.” Josh wraps his arms around Tyler’s shoulders, using Tyler as leverage into lifting himself. “I’ve been out there,” Josh says, “and whatever you’re thinking, it’s not nearly as bad as whatever’s in your head.”

Tyler wills himself to believe Josh. “Will you let me take you to the doctor?”

Josh frowns. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not. You’re in pain. Josh, you couldn’t see—”

“It’s just a stupid headache. Wanna know what we can do? Hit up a drugstore. Over-the-counter pain medication. That’s what I need.”

Tyler leaves the bed, weak on his feet, and pads into the bathroom. Toothpaste squirting more into the sink than the brush, Tyler says, “Okay, we can do that.”

Josh makes up the bed. Tyler listens to him dump everything from their bag onto the bed and repack. “You wearing that?”

“You wearing that?”

“Unless you take it off me.”

Tyler spits. “Maybe later.”

“I know the perfect place.” Josh and Tyler switch places. Josh brushes his teeth. Tyler thinks about everything bad in the world.

Tyler carries the backpack. He holds onto the straps, turning to let Josh drop toothbrush and paste inside. Standing there, his white socks sticking above his boots, the buttons on his romper done up and shiny, Tyler suggests, quietly, “Want to hit up a pancake house before taking me to that perfect place?”

Josh’s fingers are cold. “Sure thing. Lemme get our phones and those godsends for ears.”

*

They take a bus there. Tyler swings his legs and holds Josh’s hand. He gazes out the window. He acts as if everything is fine.

Josh told Tyler he was fine.

Josh presses his cheek to Tyler’s shoulder.

*

Going to a pharmacy first, Josh tosses two painkillers into his mouth and washes them down with what’s remaining of the juice boxes. Fruit punch dripping down Josh’s chin, Tyler tried his best to keep them out of sight, but the parking lot isn’t a good hiding spot, no matter if their backs press against the brick exterior.

“Feeling better?” Tyler asks, squinting from the sun in his eyes.

“A little.” Josh scans the bottle’s label. “It says it works on synthetic people.”

“Yeah.” Tyler remembers the doctor at the clinic telling them the flu shot isn’t as effective on them—but any form of protection is better than nothing.

Josh can read Tyler’s mind. “Think I should take more?” He shakes the bottle.

“No. Dunno what might happen.”

“It’s probably better than—”

“Put it in my bag,” Tyler says, spinning around suddenly. “I saw the pancake house on our way here.”

Depositing the bottle and withdrawing some cash, Josh reaches around to pop a kiss onto Tyler’s chin. “Show me.”

Tyler takes Josh’s hand.

*

“How do you think we die?”

“This isn’t a conversation to have over pancakes.”

In spite of Josh’s disapproving gaze, Tyler continues, “Those videos gave off the impression only the synthetic second chances can die of natural causes, since they can age.”

Josh peels away the paper wrapping of a straw. “Anybody can be involved in a freak accident.”

“I suppose you’re right about that.” Tyler stabs his fork into his mound of pancakes, watching the butter and syrup ooze from the puncture wounds.

“I think all synthetic people can age,” Josh mumbles. He tightly rolls up the straw wrapper between his index finger and thumb. “I don’t think it’d be very fair if they only allowed select departments the ability to age. Wouldn’t that be, like, discrimination?”

“It could be, I think. Seeing as we didn’t choose to… to…”

“Yeah,” Josh agrees, sipping at his coffee-and-oil mix. He places his elbows onto the table and bends his neck to take his straw between his lips. It hurts to lift the cup to his mouth. Tyler doesn’t ask. He wants to ask. When he stares at Josh, when he stares at Josh wincing, that déjà vu feeling twitches through his fingers. Unlike Josh seemingly remembering memories that are not his, Tyler thinks he’s starting to recall memories he was expected to recall far sooner than now. Patience, that’s all it took. Maybe Tyler’s just taking an interest in machinery, what makes them tick. This doesn’t mean the real Tyler—besides himself, because he is real and is Tyler—was a mechanic.

Josh cuts a corner from his pancakes, hands shaking. “I didn’t know I slept for that long. You could have woken me at a more reasonable time.”

“It’s good to sleep,” Tyler says, catching the eye of a little boy digging the tip of his red crayon into a playmat.

“It’s about time for us to go back to sleep.” Josh chews for a moment, head tilted as he looks out the window across from him, behind Tyler. “We can watch the sunset together.”

Tyler leans forward, the booth cushion sighing. “D’you think we’re able to kill ourselves, or would they have installed a sensor to keep us from doing that?”

“Tyler, I told you I didn’t want to talk about death over pancakes.”

“Doctors, then,” Tyler says.

But Josh shakes his head again. “Please, just… stop… talking.”

Tyler goes back to watching the little boy color. He has a blue crayon now.

“We might need to take a bus to the place I had in mind. Or a taxi.”

“Yeah?”

“Your memory’s returning to you, right?”

The little boy grinds the tip of this crayon into the piece of paper. Tyler clenches his jaw and tears himself away from the remnants of wax collecting on the table. “Bits and pieces, I think.”

Josh reaches across the table, running his fingers along Tyler’s fingers. The smile on his face is the most natural thing in the world. “I’m here for you, bro. You ready to leave?”

Tyler’s smile is just as easy. “Take me to this perfect place, man.”

*

They walk on sidewalks and down side roads without their hands disconnecting. No need for a taxi after all, they avoid the fronts of houses when they can, keeping their heads low and their feet light. Words leave seldom.

Words leave more often than Josh would like.

But Tyler doesn’t notice it.

“I know I was married. I can feel it now. I don’t know… who, though. I… I think I remember light-colored hair. No, wait, maybe—”

Josh tugs on Tyler’s hand, toward a patch of woods, toward a forest with little trees and a neighborhood attached to it. With muffled footsteps, they weave through the trees and keep watch of the inhabitants in their homes.

“Where are we going?” Tyler whispers, tiptoeing close, lips to Josh’s ear.

“We’re close.”

“Are we trespassing?”

Josh says, “Abandoned.”

“What’s abandoned?”

The place in question, the perfect place Josh had in mind, stands before them as proudly as if it were still in its prime. Dull, the paint on the wood faded from the sun, overgrown and unattended for some time now, the tree house above them seems like it could play a part in both a horror film and a lighthearted romantic comedy, depending on the time of day. With the sun beginning to set behind the roofs of houses, the tree house could go either way.

Josh glances around before helping Tyler climb the steps. “Here.”

“I don’t feel like we should—”

“I’ll be right behind you.”

Tyler’s nails dig into the steps, creaky and needing a good sanding to remove the threat of splinters. He climbs as quickly as he can, refusing to look away from the house. “Josh, it can’t be abandoned. The lights are on in the kitchen.”

“The tree house is abandoned,” Josh says, already climbing after Tyler. “The forest is reclaiming it. We’re safe.”

The door on the flooring of the tree house is weak. Tyler wouldn’t feel safe standing on it. It screeches when he applies pressure. “I can’t believe I’m going to let you raw me in a tree house.”

“Climb faster. We have to watch the sun first.”

Josh may have said the tree house was abandoned, but judging by the interior, it’s more lived-in than previously thought. Tyler didn’t question Josh. Maybe Josh lived in this neighborhood before. Maybe he knew the inhabitants of the house don’t sit in the tree house as often as they used to do. Whatever it is, Tyler takes in the makeshift curtains stapled to one of the windows. Thin, white bedsheets, Tyler parts them, looking out, toward the forest. If any window should have a curtain over it, it would be this one to shield the darkness of the woods from whoever spends time here.

Tyler considers it okay if they stay in here for the night, if they return everything to where it was before. He takes a blanket from the corner and carefully unfolds it, stretching it from wall to wall. He’s undoing the laces on his boots when Josh pops through.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Josh closes the door. The other window faces the house and the sun. It shines. Josh’s skin warms. Tyler forgets how to breathe, and he forgets how to remember how to breathe as Josh drops to his hands and knees and crawls toward him. Josh helps Tyler push the backpack from his shoulders and remove his boots. All land on a spot covered by the blanket.

“I’m going to let you raw me in this treehouse,” Josh says, Tyler falling, Josh flying.

“Oh, totally.”

Josh laughs into Tyler’s chest. “After we watch the sunset,” he says, during a break in his giggles.

“After we watch the sunset.”

They sit up to watch, using the edge of the blanket as cushioning. Still being cautious, they make sure they’re away from the window enough that if someone from outside were to look up here, they won’t be spotted.

Tyler pulls his socks farther up his calves and hugs his knees. He says, “I think I was married to someone whose name started with a J. J… J-E—no, not that. I—”

Fingers digging into the fabric of Tyler’s romper, Josh pushes himself closer to Tyler, kissing Tyler’s shoulder. “Tell me later.”

He can’t be mad. The sun is setting before him.

The sun sets, and Tyler watches Josh watch the sun set.

High off the ground, hidden in the branches of an oak tree, no one can see Josh lean forward and kiss the side of Tyler’s face. Once it goes dark, Josh’s hands go from pulling on Tyler’s romper to pushing him down, down, and Josh goes with him. Lips on lips, saliva and a tinge of oil, Tyler cups Josh’s face in his hands and allows Josh to pop the buttons from his romper.

Josh licks up his sternum. “You know, we’re not allowed to have tattoos. They don’t give us the option when we’re in there.”

“What if the person getting the synthetic second chance has a tattoo?”

Josh’s mouth leaves Tyler’s nipples wet and cold. “They must apply them during their final stages of testing, then. Maybe you were supposed to have tattoos, but—”

Not letting him finish, Tyler draws Josh in with a hand on his neck and slides their lips together again. Upon their meeting, their teeth clack together, their noses dig into cheekbones, and Tyler uses his free hand to slip into the front of Josh’s pants.

“Tell me about those self-lubricating orifices.”

Face pink, Josh begins to shake his head. He pauses, and then says, “Why don’t you tell me yourself?”

With Josh putting up a playful fight, Tyler manages to undress Josh, his bottoms to his knees, as he remains straddling Tyler’s hips. Tyler, eyes on Josh, grabs hold of an ass cheek with one hand as the other moves closer, inside. Tyler nearly leaks into his pants right there.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, I know, I can make it go away if you piss me—”

“I’ll be a good boy,” Tyler teases, two fingers inching inside with more ease than expected. “I think it’s wetter than a cunt.”

“Oh, so you remember that?”

“Shut up, and help me get this damn romper off.”

Both more desperate than the other inferred, they remain mostly dressed with the necessary articles shoved aside. Tyler’s romper to his thighs, Josh’s pants relocated to an ankle, they need to be closer. They need this. Josh kisses Tyler, shivering as Tyler takes his ass in both hands and slides into him.

Almost immediately, Tyler loses his balance. He catches himself with an elbow. Josh wastes little time in taking over, in rocking his hips, in bouncing. Tyler holds on, a hand on Josh’s knee, nails making their mark.

“Feels so—jeez—hell.” Tyler falters onto his back.

Josh sticks his arms underneath Tyler and heaves, rolling them around, until Tyler is above him, and he curls his toes and groans, Tyler not missing a beat. “Yeah, yeah, like—o-oh.”

Hand on Josh’s neck, no pressure unless asked, Tyler kisses Josh as he knocks his hips against Josh. A hard snap, Josh gasps at every move, his hands scrambling for purchase on Tyler’s sweat-slick back. He finds his home at the nape of Tyler’s neck, knuckling the hair, doing nothing else. Chin tilted toward the ceiling, a leg raised onto Tyler’s shoulder, Tyler rolls his hips a final time as he spills into Josh, with Josh’s own pooling onto a spot of his stomach thankfully not covered by his t-shirt.

Tyler is the first to speak. “Guess you’re programmed to come at the same time as your partner?”

“Sometimes, it malfunctions. Sometimes, I end up coming way too early.”

“Happens to us all at least once.” Tyler smiles. He pulls out from Josh, teeth in his lip. “So, do you just… suck up my semen?”

“Yeah. It’s a little… gross. It gets filtered through my body down there, and I either release it when I pee or have another orgasm. If I take in too much than it takes to filter out, it gets… backed up… and I need to go to them to get cleaned out.”

“Oh, man, you poor thing.”

“Hey, at least I can use my dick instead for a few sessions. If I had a vagina? A great disadvantage.”

They pull on their clothes in silence. Josh stops Tyler before he’s able to pull up his romper, saying, “Lemme,” and taking Tyler’s cock down his throat.

Tyler can’t help the high-pitched squeal that squeezes its way from his vocal cords. It ends in silent apologies—and hand waving when a back door in the distance opens.

Josh raises his head, not nearly as scared as Tyler, and crawls over to the window. He peers out. “Oh,” he says, soft, barely audible.

Tyler scrambles to do up his romper. He misses a button the first time. “W-what’s going on?”

“I know who that is,” Josh says, quickly adding, “I think.”

“Are you being serious right now?” Tyler follows in Josh’s footsteps, a slow crawl toward the window, refusing to relax until he assesses his surroundings.

Everything is more peaceful at night.

Crickets chirping, porchlights coming to life, Tyler registers the backyard below them as one that would be pet and child friendly. Neatly cut lawn and a porch with suitable seating, this is a house Tyler wouldn’t mind starting out in. As to what made them grow wary, a man has stepped from the house. His shoulders slump, and he grips a cane to aid him in walking toward the bench a foot from the door. The hair on his head is sparse. He looks thin.

Tyler blinks away tears. “You know him?” he asks Josh. “How do you know him?”

“I said I think I know him.” Josh narrows his eyes.

They both duck when the back door opens for a second time.

“You shouldn’t be out here by yourself. You didn’t even put on shoes.”

It’s another man, this one radiating nothing but warmth. Tyler watches from the corner of the window as the man goes inside, returning with a pair of socks and slippers. “Here,” he says, lowering to his knees to place them onto the other man’s feet.

“Thank you.” The voice is strained.

Josh’s hand moves across the blanket. Tyler meets him in the middle.

The men sit on the bench together. The one with the cane, he curls his fingers around his cane and eases his head onto the shoulder of his companion. For a moment, nobody says a thing.

Tyler says, “I think I’m okay with sharing my last name with you.”

Josh smiles.

They watch the couple tangling together, the cane dropping to the wooden porch, legs swinging across laps, faces hiding in necks, arms wrapping around bodies, a shivering body, a weak body, a crying body.

Tyler is too empathetic for his own good.

Their whispers are like wind.

“C’mon,” Tyler says, and lightly begins to tug on Josh’s hand. “Let’s get some sleep. I feel bad. We shouldn’t be watching this.”

“Hey,” Josh says, but it isn’t Josh. Tyler hears the word, and he thinks Josh said it, but it wasn’t Josh. It isn’t Josh. It’s the man on the bench, the one with a full head of hair and looking like he’ll make it to see the end of the year. He’s touching his partner’s face, neck, a shoulder. “Hey,” he repeats, and he starts to shake, to shout, to scream. “Don’t do this to me,” he pleads. “Not now. You’re not supposed to go now. You have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and we were going to go to the animal shelter afterward, and—”

“Do we do something?” Tyler can’t look away.

“—you can’t leave me. You can’t leave me now.”

“Josh, we need to call an ambulance.”

And Tyler turns his head.

Josh has thick, black oil creeping from his eyes, his nostrils, the part in his lips.

He smells like gasoline.

He utters, “Tyler,” and falls, falls, falls—Tyler stares, slow motion, not slow enough motion.

There’s a moment where Tyler believes he entered a nightmare and all he needs to do is pinch himself. There’s a moment where Tyler wishes Josh is messing with him.

There’s a moment where Tyler realizes he should have seen this coming.

He’s on top of Josh within seconds. Sitting criss-cross applesauce, Tyler rests Josh’s head in his lap and keeps the hair off his forehead. He’s sweating, panting, struggling to take in a breath. “Hold on for me, okay? I’m going to make everything better.” Fumbling for the backpack, Tyler digs inside it, searching for the earpieces.

But Josh says, “No, Tyler, it doesn’t matter. I—”

“I’ll take you to a doctor, then.”

“Tyler—”

Tyler doesn’t listen. He jumps into his boots and slings the bag onto his back. “Please do this for me. One step at a time, gotta take it one step at a time. I’ll be right here with you.”

Josh is able to stand on his own and pace. One foot, sliding, a shuffle, he makes it to the ladder. Tyler says, “I’ll go first, and I’ll make sure you don’t fall or hurt yourself.”

Even then, they fall. It takes Josh saying, “I can’t see,” and it takes Josh’s foot slipping.

Even then, they fall.

Even then, Josh doesn’t hurt himself.

Tyler can be sure of that, if anything.

The couple isn’t on the porch anymore. Tyler hears an ambulance in the distance.

“Stand up. Please. Lean on me. Walk. I’ll take you somewhere.”

Once Josh stands, he bends at the waist and vomits.

Tyler waits for him to finish before taking Josh’s hips in his arms, lifting him, helping Josh keep the weight off his ankles and knees. The extent of Josh’s pain levels isn’t known, not now. Going by how much he’s groaning, Tyler begins to jog. He has the strength of a mother, adrenaline-pumped, ready to save her child.

And Josh, he sports some of that strength, as well. His bare feet slap into twigs and a stray insect or two. Still profusely leaking oil from his nostrils, Josh maintains a vise grip on Tyler’s forearm. He slings his head back and forth, looking over their shoulders, dribbling oil onto Tyler, his arms, his hands. “Tyler, I—”

“We have to get you out of here,” Tyler says. He can see the exit just ahead of them, the streetlights peeking from the dense trees ahead. Just a couple more feet—“Just a couple more feet,” Tyler tells Josh, nodding his head, picking up speed. “We’re almost there. We’re going to get you some help.”

Josh doesn’t move his legs anymore. It’s sudden, like his brain’s unable to comprehend the action. He means to place his right foot in front of his left, but his right leg doesn’t lift, and he’s falling again. Tyler doesn’t like this type of falling.

He trips, and he’s falling, too.

They land on tree roots, gnarled and menacing. Tyler has a face full of rugged bark and busted lips. It bothers him. It hurts. He runs his hands down his cheeks and wipes away what he can.

Beside him, curled up at the base of the tree, Josh coughs, Josh wheezes, Josh says, “Tyler.”

It’s a struggle for them both to sit up. Cuts and scrapes and the inevitable bruise or two, Tyler reaches Josh before Josh can raise his head. “Gotta get you standing,” Tyler grunts, shoving his arms underneath Josh’s torso and biting into his cheek. “Please.”

The crickets continue chirping. The moon blinks. The breeze cools Tyler’s skin and tortures Josh’s own chilling form.

Tyler wiggles his arms out from under Josh and rubs from Josh’s shoulders to his wrists, attempting to warm the goosebumps. “Not now,” Tyler curses. “You need to—”

Abruptly, with more energy than Tyler expected, Josh rotates his body. Onto his hands and knees, Josh stretches his hand toward Tyler. Gas and oil, oil and gas, Josh looks—he looks—

Vision blurring, Tyler holds Josh’s head in his hands, his hands slippery, his hands oily.

“I need you to try to stand up,” Tyler whispers.

Smoke shoots out Josh’s nostrils.

“Please stand up,” Tyler prods.

One of Josh’s eyes closes, drooping in its socket.

“I don’t want to remember you like this,” Tyler cries.

Josh trembles. He touches Tyler’s mouth, feeling along his lips. “My head hurts,” he says, the understatement of the century. His fingers hook into Tyler’s bottom lip, pulling, yanking, when he tips forward. The force nearly knocks Tyler over, but he catches himself with his elbow.

Josh stays there.

Tyler screams.

He screams and screams and screams.

He only stops when Josh’s ears begin to emit sparks.

He runs from the forest, a wreck, two left feet and unable to get the sound of wildfire from his head.

Once he breaks from the trees, he reverts to a state of nonchalance. Hiding in his pockets and eyeing the undone laces on his boots, Tyler takes a nighttime stroll. He walks with one foot in front of the other, a titter and totter, and doesn’t allow himself to look up until he repeats the alphabet at least twice.

Luckily for him, no one wants to walk near someone who chants the NATO phonetic alphabet under their breath.

It calms him. It’s almost like he’s counting sheep.

Instead of falling asleep, he finds himself in the lot of a gas station. Autopilot and a hole in his chest, Tyler enters the small grocery store. Again, he makes no eye contact, just barely misses the shoulders of people shopping for snacks and grabbing energy drinks from refrigerators. He keeps walking to the back of the store, trying to appear inconspicuous. If he doesn’t draw attention to himself, then maybe no one will see the oil stains along his hands, his arm, the front of his romper.

The bathroom is unoccupied. Tyler shuts himself inside and switches on the sink.

He watches the water run.

He looks at his reflection.

He cries at what he sees.

“Pull yourself together,” he scolds his red eyes, and wipes his runny nose on the sleeve of his romper. He shoves his hands into the soap dispenser and under the sink. Hot water is needed. He scrubs and scrubs and scrubs and hisses at how the black on his skin paints the sink basin. He hisses at how the black reveals pink.

He hisses at his reflection and sends his forehead into the mirror.

One slam turns into two slams and two slams turn into ten slams, and he knows, he knows, he knows no matter how many times he bangs his head into a hard surface, he can never shed the memory of Josh gazing at him, pale in the face and dark eyes. Tyler saw the last light flee those eyes.

He sees them now.

Tyler presses his hands to his throat. The hot water, while still dirty, soothes the scratch. When he swallows, it hurts only a little. If he presses down on his windpipe with his thumbs, it doesn’t hurt at all.

Before he departs from the restroom, he washes the oil from his hands and what got on his neck. He dabs at the front of his romper and hopes first glance mimics food. And then, to further the chance of remaining incognito, he pulls the baseball cap from his bag and wears it low on his brow.

He can’t look at himself anymore.

He doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore.

So, he does whatever makes sense right now.

At a gas pump in the lot out front, Tyler approaches a young woman. She has faded pink hair and a kind smile. She looks at Tyler, and Tyler thinks he recognizes her from somewhere. “Do I know you?” he asks her, bypassing a greeting.

She blinks, surprised. “I, well… Are we supposed to know each other?”

Tyler’s chest hurts.

And she says, “You remind me of someone, but… you couldn’t be him.” She replaces the gas nozzle and shuts the compartment door on her car.

Moving along, Tyler grips the strap on his backpack, swinging it around, to one shoulder, and takes out, unfolds, and gives a scrap of paper to her. Her fingers touch it but doesn’t slip it from his grasp. For good measure, he says, “Will you help me?”

She, then, moves the paper closer to her eyes.

He sticks his other arm through the backpack strap.

“You want a ride to this place?”

“If it isn’t too much trouble. I don’t have anywhere else to go right now.”

From the paper to him, she inspects him, seemingly taking note of his state of dress and, no doubt, mind. There’s something else. Her lips threaten to smile, but she stops herself. “I can drive you.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She hands the paper back to him. “I think I know where that is anyway. Get in. Do you need the heat on?”

“Please.”

In her car, another wave of familiarity overcomes Tyler. He ignores it. He sets his bag on his lap, plugs in the seatbelt, and looks ahead. Absently, he begins to rock. She doesn’t say a thing as she starts her car.

Tyler closes his eyes.

He may not know what to do with himself right now, but he does know of a home away from home, a home where people like him are always welcome.

A single light is all that’s lit in the window. From here, in her car, Tyler can make out the vinyl siding.

“This is it?” She straightens in her seat, looking around Tyler.

“Yeah. Thank you. Like, I, uh, this means a lot to me. Do you want money…?”

“Don’t sweat it.”

“Thank you… again.” Tyler gives her his hand to shake.

She seems impressed. “Wasn’t a problem. I’m… My name’s Jenna.”

“I’m Tyler.”

Here’s that something else. It starts in her eyes, spreads to her mouth. A smile should appear, and it does, but it’s stifled by a weight dropping onto her. Shoulders low, a frown taking over, she points a finger at him. She waves that finger. “I have a friend named Tyler. We, um… we…” She doesn’t finish.

She’s still waving that finger.

“What happened?”

She doesn’t finish. She can’t finish. She turns to face the steering wheel and grips it with white knuckles. “Small world, right? It’s such a small world.”

Tyler rubs the crook of her elbow. “It was nice meeting you.”

“Yeah. You, too, Tyler.”

She leaves when the front door opens.

In his layers, arms over his chest and a narrowed look as he peers around the door, Mr. Mister stands there, unsure of who could want entry at this hour. Tyler thought Mr. Mister would be happy to see him. No, Mr. Mister just… frowns. He slowly opens the door the rest of the way and frowns. “Didn’t think I’d see you for a while.”

Tyler looks at his feet.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m terrified.”

Mr. Mister presses his tongue into his cheek. He thinks. “Where’s your friend?”

“I think he’s dead.”

Mr. Mister stands there. His reaction is delayed and desensitized. “Shit. That’s unfortunate.”

Tyler sniffs.

“I have a bed free.”

As always, the other residents are half-naked and dancing in the kitchen to a pan of eggs frying.

Mr. Mister leads Tyler to the first room down the hall. “Get comfortable. Bed’s unmade. Swear it’s all clean. I was just in it myself. Only woke up when I heard the door.”

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I’ve been sleepin’ all day. It was good of you to wake me. I’ll be right in.”

The bedclothes are chaotic, mostly tossed on the floor. Tyler fixes them before he does anything else. He tries not to stare at the pornography currently playing on the TV.

Joint in hand and a lighter in a pocket of his coat, Mr. Mister shuts the bedroom door, glances at the television, and says, “My bad.”

“It’s fine.”

“Supposed to be, like… feminist porn.” Mr. Mister shrugs and steps forward, in front of Tyler. “Open up.”

Tyler does without question.

Mr. Mister places the joint between Tyler’s lips and lights it with a flick of his thumb. “D’ya want to talk about it?” To be polite, he switches the channel to something a little less erotic.

Breathing becomes easier. “I don’t want to talk about anything right now.”

“I’ll talk, then. Get in bed. Smoke your pot.”

Mr. Mister aides him, removing the bag from his back, the boots from his feet, the hat from his head.

Warm and comfortable, he joins Tyler in under the blankets.

Tyler drops ashes into the bed. It’s okay.

Never mind the smoke rising from the joint, Mr. Mister gathers Tyler into his arms and whispers into Tyler’s hair, “I want you to know surroundin’ yourself with the bad is only going to make it worse. You can live a normal life. You can get married and adopt kids and have a bunch of cats. It might seem unattainable, but it isn’t. We can be happy. We can be just as happy as humans. It’s going to take some time to adapt. Most of us wander aimlessly when we start to remember what they did to us, but if you need a place to crash, I’ll give you my own bed—a dozen times over. You need to be safe. I’ll keep you as safe as I possibly can until you start to feel better. It gets better. I need you to believe that. I need you to go to sleep now, all right? It’s dark out. We sleep when it’s dark out.”

Painful to do so, Tyler squeezes his eyes shut. Snot runs from his nose. His head rings. “I’m not a bird.”

“No, love,” Mr. Mister coos, kissing his forehead and swiping the joint from his fingers, “you aren’t.”

Tyler counts sheep. He isn’t a child.

Tyler falls asleep. He isn’t a bird.

*

He wishes he could sleep for three days again.

But he sleeps for three hours.

He wakes screaming.

Mr. Mister clings to him.

“I don’t understand,” he says, muffled by the collar of Mr. Mister’s jacket. “It got so bad. His head hurt, and then it wasn’t just his head anymore.”

“He blew up, didn’t he?” The fingers in his hair are slow and cautious as they massage his scalp.

“Could I have done something? I feel like… I could have done so much more.”

“Go back to sleep.”

Tyler does. It’s somewhat peaceful.

*

Tyler wakes to Mr. Mister shoving food under his nose. Two strips of bacon and a glass of orange juice, Tyler takes his breakfast to go.

Mr. Mister makes Tyler sit down. He says, “How’re you feeling?”

“Okay. I guess. I need to—”

“You’re goin’ to stay ’ere and rest for a little while longer.”

Tyler furrows his brow. “Would… would they investigate what happened?”

The silence that follows is profound.

Tyler munches on the bacon.

“When they realize he’s synthetic, and then when they find out he’s a sex toy… yeah, they won’t do a thing.”

“Does this orange juice have oil in it?”

“It does. What are you going to do now?”

Completely pathetic, Tyler almost doesn’t say it aloud. Only laughter would come from him uttering whatever’s on his mind. He knows this, and yet he says it anyway, “I want to live.”

Mr. Mister doesn’t laugh at this either. There won’t be a need to laugh. He smiles. Mr. Mister smiles, pats Tyler’s thigh, and tells him, “I wish you the best of luck.”

*

Tyler leaves only when he’s able, and only when Mr. Mister allows.

Parting gifts, he does Tyler’s laundry and buries a small baggy of marijuana at the bottom of an inside pocket of Tyler’s backpack. “Self-medication,” he prescribes, arms around Tyler’s neck in a hug. “I’ll call someone to drive you.”

Tyler smells like fabric softener. “Thank you.”

*

With paper in tow, he knows the feeling of déjà vu he experiences in this taxi is authentic.

As the car slows to a stop in front of the house and he fumbles for the correct amount of change, he catches the curtains next to the window fluttering, almost as if it could be someone straightening the curtains in passing.

Tyler knows better. “Thank you for driving me.”

The same driver as before, they leave as soon as the front door opens.

Not at all dependent on the time of day, she wears her pajamas with a toothbrush sticking from her mouth and the familiar bags under her eyes. He wonders, briefly, if this is a façade.

“Could you help me?” he asks, folding and unfolding and refolding the paper of addresses in his hands. The gesture is a nervous tick. She doesn’t draw attention to it.

“I wasn’t sure when I read about it online,” she says, and pulls the toothbrush from her mouth, waving it at him and the empty space beside him. “This, though… this confirms it for me.”

“What did you read online?”

“They found a synthetic body in the forest by a neighborhood. They didn’t really concern themselves with it after they realized it was synthetic and didn’t have a tracker. So, the local trash collectors picked it up. After they found out it was a sex doll, I can’t imagine they’d want anything else to do with it.” Her eyes are tepid. “Nothing caught fire,” she says, like it’s supposed to make him feel better, “just a lot of smoke.”

Somehow, it does make him feel better. He doesn’t know why exactly. What last bit of consciousness Josh obtained rushed from him in his last words. He was dead before he fell into Tyler. Josh wouldn’t have felt anything that happened to his body afterward.

Tyler’s first reaction would have been to roll his eyes and scoff, but he knows it all comes down to respect. There’s a reason why families hold funerals for their dead.

Maybe it’s as selfish as Tyler saving Josh’s life in that dumpster.

Embarrassed, Tyler runs his hand under his nose and pulls the lid of his hat lower onto his brow.

She sighs and leans her weight on the doorframe. Toothbrush by her side, her free hand clutching the crook of her elbow, she says, defeated, “I know what you want from me.”

Tyler waits, bated breath, a pause in his folding.

She doesn’t break eye contact. “I can’t make any promises.”

“I want you to try. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Even if I do find him, he won’t be the same.”

“I don’t care.”

“Even if I do find him,” she repeats, “you won’t be the same.”

When he doesn’t respond right away, she shakes her head, shuts her eyes, and tightens the grip on her toothbrush. “Oh, right.” She raises her head, swats a strand of hair from her face. “Finding the poor bastard’s face isn’t it. That’s not really why you’re here.”

Tyler opens his mouth.

She brandishes her toothbrush at him. “Even if,” she spits, “I could do that, what makes you think you can just waltz into his life as if nothing happened?”

“I was made to—”

“And you were discarded. As far as he knows, you weren’t supposed to have a second chance. No… wait.”

She pales. She shifts her weight on her feet and thrusts her toothbrush at Tyler’s chest again. “As far as he knows,” she says, “you might not even be on his radar. What makes you so sure you knew him? You two could have been strangers. He could be living in Japan or somewhere far away from here.” She wipes the foam from the corner of her mouth and takes a step out of the house.

Tyler looks down at her.

She narrows her eyes. “You fell in love with a sexbot who cried too much and has a face everyone and their mother lusts for. Tell me why you want me to find him. Tell me why you want me to bring back your memory.”

“Because I’m selfish,” Tyler says. “Because I want to be happy. Because I don’t know what to do with myself, but at least this is a start.”

Her dusk-to-dawn porchlight blinks into life.

Nothing but warmth thrives in her eyes. “Like I said, I can’t make any promises. You might just get a huge migraine.”

Tyler thinks he may faint. “You’re going to help me?”

She heads into the house and eggs him to follow with a shrug of her shoulder. “I’m gonna do a hard reset. I have nothing on. Might as well try to see if I can do it. My equipment is a bit generic, so it may not do the job sufficiently.”

A twist of his body, and he’s holding out the earpieces in the middle of his palm, institution-grade and all. She stares at them. She covers her mouth. “How—?”

“These will work? They forgot to take them off when they threw me away.”

She holds them in a hand, rolls them around like dice. It looks as if she might faint now. “Definitely. Get comfortable on the couch in my room. We have a lot of work to do.”

Getting comfortable is hard. Removing his hat, his bag, even his boots, Tyler does whatever he thinks will help him feel more at home, but as soon as he sits on the loveseat next to the desktop computer, he thinks of pricking thumbs and Josh rubbing his bicep and—

It hits him now—the grief, the disbelief. He’s alone. She sits next to him, and he’s still alone. She touches his arm, and he’s still alone. She brings his face into her chest, and he’s still alone.

“It’s going to take some time,” she says, right into the side of his neck. “It’s not going to heal overnight. You’re strong, and I believe in you.”

She hooks the devices around his ears and drops into the chair in front of her desk. “Do you remember what I said to you? About your head? You’re not nearly as fucked up as you think you are. Just because your brain’s in the shape of a stomach doesn’t mean you’re utterly fucked. You have Tyler’s memories—your memories. Patience is a virtue.” Rotating in her seat to look at Tyler, she pulls her hair up. Half of it falls down, but that’s the point.

“Are you saying if they just waited, I would have eventually remembered who I was?”

“But, y’know, they’re a bunch of assholes.”

“They’re Crystal Clear Institutes,” Tyler says into his palms.

“Where their mission,” she mocks, “is as crystal as the meth I snort.” She returns to clicking, scrolling. The screen looks black from where it bounces off her pale skin. “Are you comfortable?”

“Do you want me to, like, lie down?” He does anyway, stretching out his legs, propping his feet on the arm of the couch.

“I don’t know how this will affect you.” Dark in the room, she switches on a lamp and paces. A careful gatherer, she prepares. “I’ve done hard resets on some of my friends. We sometimes need other ways to get our rocks off. It’s not the same as sex or a good slice of cake, but it knocks us out. You can’t do it to yourself. You need someone to wake you up.” Yanked from her own bed, she places a pillow under Tyler’s head and drapes a blanket over his body.

“Are you ready?” she asks, sinking into her chair.

Josh went through a hard reset in order to wake up.

Maybe it’ll be the same for Tyler.

“Will it hurt?”

“It shouldn’t. It’ll be similar to falling into a deep sleep.”

“How long will I be out?”

“Not long at all. You might not remember where you are straight away. You might not even remember waking up. I’m going to wake you up, and I’m going to ask you a series of questions. I can access your memory here. I’ll test to see if you have access to it, too.”

Tyler tugs the blanket up to the bridge of his nose. “I think I’m ready.”

She says, “Okay.”

And his eyes fade.

*

He breathes.

It’s because it makes sense.

She’s sitting next to him on the sofa, in the only other cushion over, and she turns her head to stare at him as he raises into an upright position, his back to the back of the couch, his head to the back of the couch, his head to the spinning, spinning, spinning ceiling fan.

The fan is evidence he isn’t in the institution. It would have been easy to send him there, but she didn’t. He’s on the loveseat in her bedroom, in her workshop, and when he turns his head to stare at her, he catches sight of the dark sky outside through the thin material of her curtains. He thinks, for just a second, no time has passed at all.

But she’s wearing a different set of pajamas, one that’s complimented with a purple wolf t-shirt. Her hand is cool against his skin. She checks his pulse the old-fashioned way, first on his neck and then his wrist, and conjures a thermos from the carpet. “I’m not doing this again,” she says, and helps him lift the thermos. She brings it to his mouth and lets the contents spill.

It’s chicken noodle soup, rejuvenating.

He gulps.

She lowers the thermos, and he rests it in his lap. “So, do you know your name this time?”

Words don’t surface as fast as he would like. He furrows his brow a little and realizes he’s trembling. When he goes to take another drink of the soup, she helps him again.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t pressure you. It’s different for everyone every time. I guess I’m tired.”

“I’m tired, too,” he says, finally, to her surprise.

“Then… maybe we can talk in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

She watches him finish the soup before turning off the light and dropping into her bed.

He goes to sleep easily.

*

This time, when he wakes, it’s due to a migraine. Severe, almost blinding, he ends up rolling off the couch and trapping his legs within the blanket she graciously gave him. The thud he makes is enough to wake her, as well, and he’s glad there’s light streaming onto her floor when she swings her legs into standing.

“Hey,” she says, snapping, “try not to move.” She steps over him, toward her computer, and bends over her keyboard. He listens to her type as he struggles not to flop around pathetically.

As simple as blinking, the throbbing behind his eyes disappears.

“I’m not supposed to be allowed to do that.” She crouches next to him, hugging her knees. “I can do a lot of things. You can, too, if you’re ever compelled to do something.”

Again, no words—he raises his eyebrows.

With callused fingertips skimming his hairline, she says, “While you slept, I went through your memories. What I mean by that is the memories this body has collected, not the ones they implanted into you to lie dormant until who knows when. I went through them. It’s, like… watching the world through your eyes. There’re videos, and then there’s audio. I only listened. I listened to your time in the institution, and I listened to what she did to you. I didn’t need to see it.”

A couple tears drip free of her lashes. She clenches her jaw. “You have enough Goddamn evidence to do something.” Venom in her teeth and venom in her tearful eyes, she says, “You could at least remove her from her position of power. I have connections. I can find you a civil rights attorney. You can—” Suddenly, she stops. Suddenly, she slaps her hands to her face and casts the tears to another plane. “No, nothing I tell you will matter unless you remember your name.”

“Tyler,” he says. “My name is… It’s Tyler Joseph. Robert. Tyler Robert Joseph, yeah. I was born in December…”

She stares at him, waiting, waiting, expectantly waiting.

He’s missing a big piece of the puzzle.

It takes him a minute. “I wasn’t born Tyler.”

“You don’t have to tell me. That’s dead and gone.”

He sits and pulls the blanket from his legs.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” she proceeds, wrapping her arms around her knees again, “do you suspect Tyler—the person you’re giving a second chance at life to—requested to be a cis male rather than a trans one? Or do you think they opted to give him a penis without his consent?”

“I…” He shakes his head. “I definitely thought something was off when I was in the dumpster. I felt… fake, but… that feeling went away. I think I was more concerned about”—he glances at his wrist—“something else missing, especially on… on Josh.”

“Tattoos,” she says. “You and Josh both have them.”

Fallen on deaf ears, he’s paying more attention to his hands and wrists, the blue veins underneath his skin. Her words have no meaning, but he’s slowly widening his eyes now and parting his lips. “You found him? You found Josh?”

She seems a little put off at his questions. “Tyler, you… You’ve been in my house for a month.”

Drifting to his hands once more, again, he selectively hears. He picks and chooses what he concerns himself with only to react moments later. Delayed reactions, some are allowed in situations like this. Tyler should be more mindful. Tyler reverts to wide eyes and parted lips. “That doesn’t—”

“I told you that you wouldn’t remember waking up,” she interrupts him. “It’s because every time I brought you out of the reset, you just… didn’t remember. I couldn’t let you leave my house like that. It wasn’t fair, so I kept going. I put you under again. And I put you under again. And I did it again.

“I was fucking terrified I messed up something when you woke up the time before last with no recollection as to who you were and a… tendency to bite.” She rubs her forearm. “So, when I put you under again, I left you under for a week, just in case.”

Tyler looks at his feet, his painted toes. “And here I am.”

“And here you are.” As she stands, she gives another pat to her arm. Tyler watches her sit down at her computer. “I’m not telling you where Josh is because you need to remember that on your own.”

He’s focused on her now and only her. He sits on his hands for good measure. “What—?”

“It’s important,” she presses, the threat of tears in her eyes again. “When you remember that, I’ll let you leave… let you schedule a… tattoo appointment… and be yourself again—but only when you remember that on your own. It’s important.”

He says, “It’s important.”

She says, “It’s important.”

So, he nods, and he says, “Okay. What will help me remember?”

“Time,” she replies, “hopefully.”

It took a while for Josh to remember. Tyler is confident. He repeats, “Okay,” and gently removes the devices from his ears.

Everything unplugs. He feels as light as air.

He gives them to her. “Can I use your shower?”

“Brush your teeth, too,” she says. “Sleep. I’ll give you something to repel the pain. The migraines might come back.”

“Could you put it in a juice box?”

She doesn’t laugh. She just stares. Her fingers curl around the earpieces. “Of course, I can.”

Nearly every article of clothing he pulls from his backpack is mismatched and without any chance of that changing. Blue, red, white, he decides it doesn’t matter when it comes to this. If he were in company of someone other than the girl currently sat at her computer, it still wouldn’t matter. Tyler doesn’t care. He’s been wearing this romper for days on end.

“Hey,” he says, standing with an oversized white t-shirt and black basketball shorts over his arm. “What’s your name?”

She stares again. She says, “Beth. You can call me Beth.”

“Thank you for everything you’re doing, Beth.”

Quietly, she grins. “You’re welcome.”

On his way to the bathroom, he swears he hears her suck in a breath and slowly release it.

*

“This will keep away the pain. It will also make you incredibly drowsy.”

“That’s okay.”

“I’ll keep an eye on you.”

Fruit punch in his stomach, a long blanket over his body, and a slowly recovering brain in his head, Tyler sleeps as soundly as ever.

*

At this point, he shouldn’t be surprised he dreams of golden rings and doves against clouds.

He’s just disappointed to find he didn’t realize it sooner.

Beth can read it on his face as soon as he wakes. She’s in front of her computer, a bowl of cereal by her keyboard, wearing another wolf t-shirt, this one in green.

Two days have come and gone.

He knows his hair has dried funny, and there’s a spot of drool on the corner of his mouth, but he doesn’t care. He’s ready to leave, ready to climb the tallest tree, scale the tallest building, because he knows—oh, God, does he know; he knows, knows, knows he’s helplessly—hopelessly—in love with Joshua William Dun.

But he falters. During his revelation, his feet have picked him from the couch, and he’s standing now, a big grin on his face—but he falters. He falters, falls, and he sinks into the couch, fingers digging into a ripped seam on a cushion.

He falters, and he tries not to let it show. He’s trying to be strong, as confident as he was two days ago.

It’s slow going.

“Do you think he’ll… want me?” It’s slow going, and it’s rhetorical, asked to the room.

The room answers.

She says, “I’m not an expert on human nature.”

She says, “You might have had more luck with him accepting you if it was closer to when the… other Tyler died, assuming he’s dead already.”

She says, “He’s most likely dead.”

To his silence, she pauses in her eating. Spoon halfway to her mouth, a drip of milk landing on the brim of the bowl, she says, “You’re Tyler, though, and he’s in love with Tyler.”

“I want to be… perfect.”

“Lemme finish eating.”

“What are you going to do?”

Beth drinks the milk at the bottom, smacking her lips after. “I’m going to make you perfect.”

He busies himself when she begins to walk around her room. The blanket he slept with, it’s large and more of a tarp than anything. Two thirds of it fell onto the floor during his slumber. He could wrap it around himself three times if he wanted to become a swaddled infant. It’s warm. He folds the blanket and sticks his hands inside it, like a muffler.

The look she gives him is apologetic. “Could you unfold that?” she asks, a kit in her arms, a machine in her arms. “Lay it out. It’s softer than the carpet. You’re gonna be lying down.”

Somehow, he doesn’t question her. Obedience is passive for him right now. His head—it doesn’t hurt, per se, but it feels off. Heavy, almost, and that doesn’t matter. He’s soon lying flat on his back, a pillow from her bed elevating his head.

She turns on a lamp. “I’ll do your tattoos. You remember them, right?”

He nods.

“Could you”—she gives him a sketchpad, large—“draw them for me?”

Tyler doesn’t want to raise his head. “Do you have a ruler? They’re geometric.”

She procures one from her desk.

Tyler rolls onto his stomach.

*

“Here,” she says, and nudges the earpieces into his hands. “I think I can make your memories enter your head like a slideshow. It’ll give you something to do while I do this. If you close your eyes, it’ll be like a dream. It’ll be like you’re there.”

Tyler yanks off his t-shirt.

She leans into his right bicep.

*

As a child, his mom wouldn’t let him read Harry Potter. He had to ask a friend from school to bring over the books when they were supposed to be working on a project about cave formations. Nose buried within the cracked spine and the yellow pages, Tyler burned through the novel in an afternoon. He loved it to pieces.

When decorating for his first apartment, he visited a bookstore down the road and purchased a boxset of all seven books. The editions were old, used, but he didn’t mind that at all. Snuggling under his bed covers every night with the familiar odor of a cracked spine and yellow pages brought him back to being a young teen, fresh out of homeschooling and void of any social skills and a thought process and morals separate from his parents.

*

In his formative years, he never favored one parent over the other. If anything, when his siblings came along, he devoted his entire life to them.

He didn’t pay much attention to what was between his legs or who he would let see when the time arrived for that.

He was a child, a pre-teen, and children that young shouldn’t be sexualized.

*

As a teenager, he became interested in robotics with a dash of medicine sprinkled here and there.

He didn’t know what to do with himself.

That night, late, a session passed of dark curls and pruned fingers and keeping his lips shut despite wanting to scream with frustration, he saw his first commercial from Crystal Clear Institutes.

*

He met Josh on the evening of his high school graduation.

He didn’t know it was Josh yet—just some poor guy who smiled at inappropriate moments and tripped far too often.

His mother always scowled when Josh popped into her line of sight, and she shook her head and said a tip wasn’t forthcoming.

She left Tyler in charge of her purse when she went to use the restroom, never knowing he plucked twenty dollars from inside and stuck it into his bra.

His family went on to assume he caught the eye of some cook or server, and that’s why he begged them to wait outside at the end of their meal. An embarrassment, that’s what they thought they were, and laughed about it. Tyler couldn’t tell them they were wrong.

He found Josh outside, not exactly loitering with the rest of the arguably more professional servers by the dumpsters behind the restaurant. Josh wasn’t smoking. He had a kind smile on his face, inexperience in his eyes, and Tyler watched those eyes churn out fear when he approached.

Tyler was out of place in more ways than one. Apart from his formal attire and unraveling curls, a wave of what Tyler soon learned to be dysphoria washed over and drowned him as he stood there in front of Josh.

But Josh was nothing. He had bad posture and a pimple attempting to hide behind a nose ring. Josh even had patchy facial hair.

But Josh was everything. Tyler didn’t care Josh wasn’t the best-looking guy working here. What mattered was that Josh looked at him, albeit with some intimidation, and succumbed to his anxiety and stood there in silence.

For a moment, Tyler hated him.

For a moment, Tyler wanted to be him.

To the laughter and whistles from the workers around them, Tyler pulled the twenty from his bra and held it out for Josh to take.

And Josh took it immediately.

“My parents weren’t going to leave you a tip,” Tyler explained, “but I stole this from my mom when she wasn’t looking.”

Josh looked at the bill, at Tyler, at the money, and finally settling on Tyler. “Thank you,” he squeaked, then cleared his throat, and said, “Thank you.”

Tyler hated his voice and the way he scrunched up his nose.

Tyler thought if he squinted his eyes, then Josh would melt into someone Tyler didn’t want to pummel.

This wasn’t successful.

Before he left, Josh spoke again. He said, “I like your legs.”

Tyler said, “Thanks, I grew them myself.”

He tried his best to ignore the pestering from his mother. She claimed she saw Tyler talking to a boy, and his father wagged his finger and said, “I thought I told you not to date until college.”

Closer to bedtime, his parents already settled down for the night, Tyler crept into his brothers’ room. Zack and Jay, Tyler’s mom wouldn’t let Tyler share a room with Zack even though they were the two closest in age. He was pushed into a room with his sister. He didn’t care about that. He thought their pink walls were a nice touch to solidify their femininity.

That wasn’t the point.

Tyler went to his brothers on tiptoe. They were up, would stay up for hours on end because it was summer vacation.

Tyler sat on the footboard of Zack’s bed, leaned in, hands on knees, and whispered, “Can you guys keep a secret?”

*

Transitioning had to wait until Tyler’s early twenties, when he was out of the house.

A new apartment, a mundane job at an ice cream parlor, Tyler focused on himself, and he was happy.

*

He met Josh for a second time at the beach.

A Joseph family vacation, one that Tyler had managed to avoid for years, jumped on him as if he were a snack for a lion.

Since Zack and Jay were still the only ones to know about him, they suggested being the ones to wrangle him in and drive a separate car to the beach. His mother saw no problem with this, as long as it would get Tyler to spend time with his family.

When they got out of the car, Tyler’s buzzed hair and unshaven legs and armpits were the least of her problems. She didn’t even care Tyler didn’t put his all into a hug. She was just happy to see her eldest child again.

At dinner on the pier, Tyler’s dad asked if he was a lesbian.

“Which is fine,” he added.

“I’m not a lesbian,” Tyler said.

“You’re sick,” he concluded. “Chronically ill. Why else would your voice be that deep?”

“I’m not chronically ill. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What’s the matter, then?”

His brothers shot a look at each other.

His sister, perceptive, offered him a smile.

His mother grabbed her knife.

“I’ve been taking testosterone for a few years now,” Tyler confessed.

“Honey,” his mother tutted, buttering his roll for him, “why in the world would you take testosterone? You’re supposed to have a low amount.”

“I don’t want a low amount.”

She cocked an eyebrow.

Tyler didn’t understand how they weren’t getting it.

He said, “Seriously?”

He said, “I’m sitting right here, in front of you, and you haven’t figured it out yet?”

His dad spoke up. “We already said it was fine if you were a lesbian.”

“I’m not a lesbian,” Tyler groaned.

“Sweetie,” his mom cooed.

He said, “I’m not hungry anymore,” and nearly bolted from the restaurant.

That’s when he ran into Josh, literally, heads bumping together, feet tripping, arms waving. Tyler fell first, and Josh managed to catch himself before landing entirely on top of Tyler.

Tyler pat his torso and wrapped his arms around himself. “That would have been—”

“I’m sorry,” Josh sighed.

“I had surgery a few months ago, and it’s still a little sore.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“No, no, dude, you’re fine. It’s okay.”

Josh helped Tyler up, and even dusted him off. His pats were as careful as Tyler’s own. “So, uh, what did, like… why did you need surgery?”

Tyler narrowed his eyes.

Josh shook his head. “Ignore me. That was rude, invasive. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to run into you or knock you over—and I didn’t mean any offense when I asked about your health. I was—just—I—you’re very handsome.”

Lips gaping like a fish, Tyler’s answer was silent and interrupted by more of Josh’s rambling. “I totally meant that in a… bro way… Like, hey, man… you’re looking… very handsome… today.”

He was as red as a tomato, and Tyler stared at him and smiled. He smiled.

Josh had better posture. He had better hair, dark and curly, and he grew into his facial hair. There wasn’t a pimple hiding behind his nose ring. He smelled good.

That could have been the ocean.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” Tyler asked. “I mean, it was so long ago. How could you remember me?”

Josh, still red in the face, tilted his head. He scrunched up his nose.

Tyler didn’t want to pummel him anymore. “You were a server at a restaurant. I found you outside and gave you a twenty-dollar tip.”

There’s the bell. Josh began to smile, too. “And you pulled it from your—”

And then, there’s the bell.

Josh’s eyes didn’t lower. He looked at Tyler. He smiled. An explanation wasn’t needed for him to understand.

“I, like, meant it when I said you were handsome. I… It… wasn’t in a—”

“Hey, dude, I think you’re handsome, too.”

They sat on the beach until it went dark. Tyler’s sister texted him, but he didn’t reply.

He only replied to Zack. He told Zack he was safe.

With Tyler’s cheek to his shoulder, his arm around Tyler’s waist, Josh said, “I like your legs.”

And Tyler replied, “Thanks. I grew them myself.”

*

Tyler’s week-long stay at the beach brought him to places he never thought possible. Sleeping in for most of the day and staying out late, he never spent time with his family, in spite of this trip being a family vacation. Regardless of this expectation, even his mom stopped asking where he went off every evening. His father made him eat dinner with them, but after that, Tyler was free to wander.

And he wandered with Josh.

Josh was staying with his own family, and they didn’t mind their eldest child disappeared only to slip back into their hotel later that night. Tyler saw them once, when he waited for Josh to finish his required family sit-down meal. He introduced himself to Josh’s parents, waved at Josh’s sisters. Josh’s brother was cool. Tyler liked him a lot.

Where Josh and he spent their time together didn’t matter. Most, if not all, of their time turned to the beach. It was dark. It was empty. Josh always held his hand and had something interesting to say.

Occupying a spot on the sand, the towel underneath them as thin a barrier as any, Josh kissed him.

He was inexperienced. He didn’t know what to do. His hands shook, and once he finally had the courage to kiss Josh back, Josh pulled away to stare at him. Josh just stared, and he leaned in again, and Tyler knew what to do now.

*

Vacation over, back in Ohio, Tyler and Josh waited for their three-month anniversary to progress further in their relationship. It was difficult. Josh could work wonders with his tongue just in Tyler’s mouth, his hands just on Tyler’s thighs.

Tyler told himself he could do this.

Josh’s bed was soft.

Josh’s bed smelled good.

Josh was gentle. He kissed Tyler. He coddled Tyler.

He buried his face between Tyler’s legs.

“Can I finger you?” he whispered against Tyler’s labia, suckling on Tyler’s folds, up, up, up to Tyler’s clit.

“Y-yeah.”

But it hurt. Tyler didn’t know why it hurt.

“No penetration. That’s okay. We don’t need penetration.” Josh returned to Tyler’s clit. He kissed. He loved.

“Thank you,” Tyler said. He carded his fingers in Josh’s hair. He wasn’t frustrated.

He couldn’t be frustrated.

Josh was so sweet. Josh was kind.

Josh came over to Tyler’s place that weekend with a set of dilators. A light pink color to his cheeks and his hair damp from a sprinkle of rain outside, Josh shuffled his feet. “I heard… these might help. You don’t have to use them, though, y’know. Penetration isn’t required for us to have sex. We’re still having sex. Besides, viewing sex as purely penis-in-vagina is very heteronormative. That’s like saying a couple who both had vaginas never really had sex if their sex doesn’t involve a penis. But, like, anyway, I bought them because they might help, if you want the help.”

Tyler sucked Josh’s dick as repayment and ordered a pizza.

He didn’t know if they would work, but he needed to try.

It only hurt a little. Eventually, he grew used to it.

Eventually, he wanted to see if he could take Josh.

He waited until another three months passed. He thought more time would be beneficial in the long run.

They were in Josh’s apartment again, back in Josh’s bed, and Tyler undressed and said, “I want you to penetrate me.”

Josh said, “Are you sure?”

Tyler was already so wet. “Yes.”

Josh reached for the lube, just in case.

And while it took a better part of an hour for Tyler to get comfortable with two of Josh’s fingers inside him, relief coursed through his body. It cooled him. He wanted more.

“Please,” he said, licking along Josh’s lips, and Josh rolled on a condom.

And while this also took longer than Tyler would have liked, Josh entered him, stretched him. He cried into Tyler’s shoulder when he came. Tyler held onto him. He dug his nose into the side of Josh’s face.

They slept.

In the morning, Tyler wiggled his fingers into Josh’s side. Morning breath wasn’t a concern. Using protection wasn’t a concern either. Once Josh woke, once he consented with a smile, a playful bite to Tyler’s nose, and uttering, “Climb on me, dude,” Tyler sat on Josh’s hips and wasn’t in any pain.

Tyler almost didn’t mind the yeast infection that developed as a result. Josh bought Monistat and administered it for him, offering him reassuring words throughout the insertion of the applicator. Afterward, he curled up behind Tyler and massaged his groin, back and forth, from one hip to the other. Not helpful in any way, apart from emotional support, the motion reminded Tyler of measures he would go to when dealing with menstrual cramps.

“I think I love you,” Tyler said, as he ignored the burning deep in his cunt.

Josh continued rubbing Tyler’s stomach. “I think I love you, too.”

*

“Stop, stop. Please. I don’t want to watch it anymore,” he says to the open window on his left.

He speaks to the night owls.

He speaks to Beth.

Beth grinds her teeth into ice chips.

Tears left their tracks down to his ears and the pillow below his head. His ears, though, they’re free, and he doesn’t want to stuff them for a very long time. Although Tyler knows this reaction may be dramatic, he also knows it’s sane, as far as his sanity can go.

He clutches those earpieces, holding on to them for dear life—ironic.

“What’d you get to?” she asks, and tilts the cup of ice toward him, a silent offer.

The offer is generous. Tyler takes it, needs to take it. A chip cries into his skin and drips down his wrist. “I had a yeast infection.”

“Couldn’t get to your wedding? Or the day you sat Josh down and told him you wanted a sec—”

He misses his mouth.

She stops. She frowns. She moves on. “I finished your tattoos. Rubbed this cream over them. Faded them a little, but they look more natural like this.”

The melted ice chip slips down his chin to join the pools of tears on the pillowcase.

“Well,” she says, “I didn’t finish them all. The one on your upper thigh, that one’s personal. I couldn’t bring myself to do that one. He’ll do it for you, won’t he? Welcome-home present.”

Tyler lies there.

“I’m sure he’ll do it for you,” she says.

Tyler closes his eyes. The blink is too long. “I remember everything. I don’t want to relive them anymore. Please. Do you have some more of that medication for migraines?”

“Want it in a juice box?”

He nods. He sits up.

He listens to her chew as she walks to her kitchen.

He looks at his chest. He looks at his arms.

It’s brief, but he feels like himself.

Beth crouches with a box of juice in her hand. “It’ll knock you out. Another day, another two days, Josh will be there when you wake.”

The juice doesn’t last. “We have a house together.”

Slurring his words and stumbling to his feet, independence comes to him in the form of being able to set the empty juice box on her desk. Elbows on the wood, his forehead tips to lie along the wood. Close to her keyboard, Tyler drops the earpieces there next. He doesn’t move.

She hooks her arms around his torso and guides him the rest of the way to the sofa. “A house?” she goes, feigning interest. “That’s an admirable feat.”

He crosses his ankles. “We have a…”

A heavy thud, he lets his right leg drop to the carpet. The large blanket she picks up to cover him also covers the leg on the floor.

“Go to sleep,” she tells him.

“We… we…” Tyler can’t keep his eyes open.

“You’re almost there,” she whispers, fuzzy and muted.

He says, “We have a tree house in our backyard,” and drifts into nothingness.

*

When the nightmares haunt him, he excels to defiance. Pumping through his veins, he believes he is strong.

But the nightmares, they’re not delicate. They hurt. They creep inside Tyler, deep within him, and he doesn’t want to bend to them, but he has Josh on his mind. The Josh on his mind is dead. He’s crawling toward Tyler with a broken back and his hands and feet twisted around the wrong way, and he’s crawling, crawling, and he’s too fast.

Oil coats his teeth.

He spits in Tyler’s face.

And Tyler wakes. He dreams about waking up.

And Josh is there. For some reason, Josh has blue hair.

He’s touching Tyler’s arm, his thumb stroking Tyler’s wrist. “Hey,” he whispers, scooting in close to fix the blankets around them. He grabs Tyler’s wrist again. “You’re okay.”

Tyler just stares.

Josh smiles.

Before Tyler can smile back, Josh’s face melts as easily as that ice chip Tyler held in his palm. Sparks fly. Sparks fly, and they’re not good. Tyler weeps.

He’s crying upon waking.

He hasn’t stopped crying.

In her bed and chewing a hole through her lip, Beth theorizes, “Maybe you’ll feel better when you see him. Maybe your subconscious is trying to warn you. Maybe your subconscious is trying to prepare you.”

She floats to her computer, punches her keyboard, and clicks too much and not enough.

“Here,” she says, at last, and dangles a flash drive from its keychain off the crook of her index finger, the earpieces hanging off her pinky. “Don’t have to listen or watch. Take my word for it. They’re on here—your memories. I put the ones from Crystal Clear Institutes in their own folder. I’m not saying it’ll help when you come face-to-face with him because he might not let you step foot inside the house. But… it might help him understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Why you’re nervous. Why you might be scared of dogs. Why you may not fully get the way the world works. Why you don’t really understand yourself.”

She shrugs.

“Why you want him to be happy,” she adds, quieter. “Why you want to be happy.”

He wipes his eyes. “I don’t know what to wear.”

“That romper was cute,” she suggests.

*

So, he wears the romper.

No one looks at him twice. He’s unable to pull a second glance from the person he chooses to sit beside on the bus ride into town. Almost full to capacity, he wishes someone left a window seat open; it’s hard to pinpoint where he is from an aisle seat. But he keeps his shoulders back and his baseball cap low on his brow. A group of girls bounces in their seats behind him, humming, lightly singing. A countdown, they whisper behind their hands and sing songs Tyler vaguely remembers from a time before he became self-aware.

He picks at his cuticles.

They get off when he does. He keeps his gaze on his feet and considers one sock falling into his boots fashionable.

Being cooped inside a house for a month should affect him more. While he is sick to his stomach, the other symptoms of institution-made anxiety aren’t present. No weakness in his knees, no throbbing at the base of his skull, and no persistent waves of sweat under his arms, Tyler expects these and more, but… nothing like that happens. As he’s walking down the sidewalk, walking along the path someone with his name and face has walked numerous times before with the sun setting behind him, Tyler begins to grow almost excited. Excited to be alive or excited to see Josh, the source of it is unknown at this point. He knows he should have a guard up. He knows he should be expecting the worst. Like Beth told him, even if they were to find Josh, there’s absolutely no guarantee he’ll be the same. Tyler’s memories, though, when he shuts his eyes as tightly as they will go, he remembers the same Josh. Artificial or not, the Josh he knew in that tree house is identical to the one in his head, albeit with a few minor differences, mainly cosmetic.

Tyler elects to travel around the front of the houses. Ducking into the forest behind the neighborhood as he did once before wouldn’t be ideal. He can’t predict his reaction to seeing the spot Josh crawled toward him and unceremoniously fell never to move again. The same can be said of the tree house. From the front yard, Tyler can’t see the structure tucked within an oak tree. He can faintly make out the tips of the trees against the dark sky.

There’s a light on somewhere in the house. It illuminates the front window with a dim glow.

Maybe he should have waited until morning. Maybe he should walk away, hop on the bus, and begin his life anew in an unknown state.

Maybe he should knock on the door.

He knocks on the door.

This action alone makes him regret ever coming here. Soon as his arm drops to hang limply by his side, the confidence and reassurance cascaded with it. He’s left empty and visibly shaking. Before he can realize what he’s doing, his hands grips the straps of his backpack, his feet rotate on the heels, and his body sends itself into a flight response. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he whispers to himself, stepping off the front porch. If he hurries, he’ll be two streets over by the time the door opens. If he hurries, maybe the door won’t open at all.

Despite his attempts to cower, the door opens, and a confused voice calls to him. “Can I help you?”

The tone is enough to stop him in his tracks. He’s in the front yard, the grass needing cut, the grass hiding the toes of his boots. And he stands there, and he needs to say something, but he can’t—he can’t. He can barely raise his head and cast a look over his shoulder. Stealth, hiding his identity, hiding the racing in his chest, Tyler stares at Josh, Josh—Josh.

He blinks away tears.

With a blue tint to his hair and a beard on his face, Josh appears as run down as his synthetic counterpart. He’s by the door, holding onto the doorjamb in one hand and daring to reach out with the other. Useless, in fact, because Tyler is so far away, but that doesn’t stop Josh. Something compels him to reach forward and touch the stranger. Maybe there’s an itch in the farthest part of Josh’s brain that recognizes the person standing in his lawn.

He says, “Do you need help?”

Tyler watches him search the road next, hoping there would be a run-down vehicle nearby.

Tyler realizes he has no plan. He doesn’t know what he thought might happen when Josh opened the door. He didn’t account for this.

His body wants to flee.

He turns around, white knuckles against his bag straps, and makes his way onto the porch again. Josh isn’t able to recognize him due to the hat on his head, but by the time Tyler plants his combat boots in front of Josh, Josh already catalogues the tattoos along Tyler’s arms. This makes him shake his head. This makes him whimper. This makes him cover his face with sweatshirt-enveloped palms.

Tyler glances at Josh’s legs and spots his name inked above Josh’s left knee, the hem of his shorts barely concealing it.

And this makes Tyler cry. This makes Tyler speechless.

Josh rubs away the tears. His cheeks are raw. “Right,” he says. “This is some cruel joke, isn’t it? They don’t do it like this. They don’t have the synthetics fucking show up to the person’s house and act like everything’s just fine. We’re supposed to go up there, and they—it’s supposed to be peaceful. It’s supposed to be special. It’s not supposed to be like this.”

He speaks with ice and finger pointing. “I don’t know who you are because t-they—they told us it didn’t work. They said it didn’t work, and you’re standing here and—I told him not to do it. I told him I would be okay without him, but he didn’t listen. When they called us and said it didn’t work, it crushed him, and I think that’s what made him worse. Ironic, yeah? You’d think he’d want to push and live longer because his fucking second chance didn’t—”

Josh stops.

Tyler wipes his eyes.

Josh says, “You stole his identity, didn’t you? You just thought you’d come here and pretend to be him to have a roof over your head, but that’s not how this is going to work. I’m going to call someone, and they’re going to take you away and strip you for parts and—what are you doing?”

Tyler shoulders the bag, twisting it to dig inside. It takes a moment of awkward silence for him to fumble with the contents, but he finds the flash drive. Another awkward silence follows as Josh waits for him to return the pack onto his back. And when Tyler does, he raises his head, and he holds out the flash drive for Josh to take. And when Tyler does this, he and Josh make eye contact.

It should be terribly cliché. It should be like long-lost lovers reuniting. It should be like—

“You look so healthy,” Josh says, the corners of his eyes wet. “Oh, my God, look at what they did to you.”

Tyler pushes the flash drive into Josh’s chest.

Josh collects it. Josh looks down at it.

“My memories,” Tyler says, and he can’t look at Josh anymore. He needs to turn his head, bite into his cheek, do something else.

“What, I have to install them onto you?”

“Just look at a folder on there. ‘Crystal Clear Institutes.’ Please.”

“Do you rust?”

Tyler looks at Josh. “What?”

Josh shrugs. “It’s supposed to rain tonight. Do you rust?”

“No.”

“Come inside anyway.”

Here’s his body freezing again, that flight response plunging the tips of his toes into a puddle, forcing him to shift his balance onto his heels. He thinks he might tip backward. He thinks that would be a pleasant way to go, with the way Josh’s eyes scan along his body and tug at his heartstrings. It’s stupid. Tyler tells himself it’s stupid. He wants to believe Josh is a stranger. He wants to believe Josh would sooner push him to the curb than invite him inside, but Josh invites him inside.

And he stands there, and he doesn’t know if this is a trick.

Josh turns the flash drive in his hand. He nods his head, back, gesturing to the house and the living room behind him. Tyler knows what it looks like without stepping foot into it with these boots and this synthetic face.

“Are you, uh, hungry?” Josh bribes. It isn’t strong. Josh’s cooking skills are more on the lines of microwaveable meals and cold cuts. That’s all Tyler could eat—not Tyler, Tyler. He didn’t have an appetite. He never had an appetite.

Tyler wants to smell the crook of Josh’s neck and get beard burn on his lips.

“No, I’m not hungry. I… I’ll come inside, though, if that’s still okay…”

“It’s not like I’m gonna take away my offer. It’s an offer. That’d be rude. Come on,” Josh repeats, softer this time. “I’ll watch whatever’s on this thing”—he jiggles the flash drive by its keychain—“and you can just chill.” The way Josh looks at him, he’s scanning him more, eyes dragging down and dragging up. And there’s something else.

Tyler wraps his fingers around his throat. His other arm wraps around his torso, hugging himself.

“I’m not going to call anybody,” Josh says.

Mistrust—that’s what Josh expels. In his eyes and apparent from his body language, Josh sees someone in front of him who resembles his lover, but who is not his lover. The memories, the face, the thoughts, all of those might be familiar to him, and might be deceiving to him, too. Tyler doesn’t blame him. Josh is essentially inviting a stranger in his house; Josh can’t believe Tyler is a stranger like Tyler can’t believe Josh is a stranger.

And still, Josh builds a wall. He wants to be in a separate room from Tyler, in case—for him—this turns out to be a situation where a synthetic individual snatched an identity in order to gain entrance into a residence. That would be too easy. That would be dangerous. What’s stopping Crystal Clear Institutes from replacing the world leaders and taking over the world?

Tyler moves toward the door. Josh slides to the right, letting Tyler pass, and shuts the door once Tyler spots the couch against the opposite wall. He sits here. The cushions remember. Tyler rubs his face. He can feel the scrapes and tender areas from his fall from the tree house.

He drops his head in his hands.

Hesitant, Josh says, “Make yourself comfortable,” and disappears down the hall.

The TV, set atop a shelf with empty picture frames, is turned to the local news reporting on the weather. Tyler can hear the thunder now.

It takes only a minute for his stomach to start aching and his skin to start crawling. He loops his arms around his stomach, the pressure not helping one bit, and bends forward. The space below the lid of his cap touches his knees. When he begins to shiver, it feels violent.

Flooding against his will, Tyler remembers a time where he sat on this couch with a mirror in his hand. He remembers turning his head and meeting eyes with Josh’s closed ones. He remembers Josh waking not long after and reassuring him he’s as handsome as the second time they met.

Dear God, Tyler remembers a time where he dropped that mirror and grabbed the front of Josh’s shirt and pulled Josh in and kissed Josh and loved Josh. He remembers Josh undressing him and rubbing the top of his shorn locks with a palm and nudging his thighs apart with an elbow. He remembers Josh’s lips suckling on his clit, Josh’s tongue massaging his clit—and, dear God, Tyler remembers Josh holding himself at the base as he inched inside Tyler.

But it hurt. It hurt so bad Tyler yelped, and Josh took him into his arms and rocked them and whispered, “I never want you to be that tight again.”

God, God, God, Tyler remembers a time where Josh carried him to the bedroom and drew out the set of dilators, and Josh picked up the smallest one because Tyler had told him he wanted to try, and Josh couldn’t say no. He couldn’t say no, and he parted Tyler’s folds and pressed the dilator inside, and Tyler couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take it, and his stomach feels so sick, and Josh took Tyler into his arms again and kissed him and parted his folds with the tip of his tongue. He was a savior with his tongue, and Tyler throbbed for him.

And now… and now, Tyler sits on this couch and is absolutely frightened for his life. He needs to run, he needs to leave, but Josh is coming down the hall. He stands in the living room, in front of the TV, and the tears on his cheeks are identical to the ones on Tyler’s own. He stands, and he sobs, and he says, “I’m so sorry.”

Tyler looks at his feet.

Josh says, “If I had known this would have happened, I would have tried to persuade Tyler against this more.”

“But you were selfish,” Tyler says.

“Wouldn’t you be?” Josh crouches in front of Tyler, eye contact, the wall he built carefully being dismantled without his knowledge. “If you were with someone, and they were your whole fucking world, and they were dying, wouldn’t you do anything to keep them alive? Wouldn’t you tell yourself hiring a company to make a synthetic person with your loved one’s face and memories is the most humane thing to do when confronted with the possibility of being alone for the rest of your life?”

Josh leans forward, grasping Tyler’s knees. His hands are warm. Tyler closes his eyes.

Josh squeezes, and Tyler opens his eyes.

“Wouldn’t you be convinced,” Josh continues, “you deserved a second chance when you finally have them next to you in bed with the biggest smile on their face and disease not ripping them apart anymore?”

Tyler says, “It’s okay.”

He says, “I’m selfish, too.”

Josh’s face softens.

Tyler says, “Watch what comes after. You already know what happened before.”

“What comes after?” asks Josh.

“You tell me.”

Josh disappears again.

He doesn’t show his face again.

Eventually, Tyler shoves off his boots and sticks his bag beside them.

Eventually, he curls into himself, baseball cap and all, and tries to sleep.

And when he sleeps, this time, this time, he doesn’t dream.

*

He thinks, if he thinks positively, the reason he didn’t dream is because he found the actual Josh—the Josh he was meant for in his second chance at life. This Josh is who this Tyler knew, cared about, and loved with his whole heart. Josh’s reaction was natural. Tyler was only surprised at Josh offering him a place to stay instead of kicking him to the curb.

“So you don’t rust,” was his reason for that, and Tyler can hear the rain still.

Now, Josh sits on the carpet by the couch, watching Tyler as he rouses, as breakfast cooks in the next room. Tyler doesn’t know how long Josh has sat here, seemingly amused with what he sees with that faint smile on his face, but Tyler doesn’t ask. He shifts his weight around, rolling onto his stomach, and lifts himself by his forearms.

Josh just smiles more.

“Stop that,” Tyler mumbles, pushing his fingers into his eyes to rub the sleep from them.

“He used to sleep in a hat, too, when he began to lose his hair.”

Tyler lowers his hands.

Teeth eating away at the corner of his mouth, Josh says, “I watched it all, you know, like you told me. It’s likely I miscounted, but it’s… I don’t know how to describe it. You were with the synthetic human who looked like me for about fourteen days, and during that time, you fell completely head over heels for him.”

“Are you mad?”

“I’m mad they used my likeness for a sex toy without my permission.”

“Maybe there was some fine print somewhere, when you signed the papers to allow them to—”

Josh shakes his head.

Tyler bites his tongue.

“It’s not… It’s not cheating,” Josh says, “because you didn’t—you couldn’t—” Abruptly, he stands under the guise to check on the food. And yet, there’s despair on his face. He hurries away. Tyler follows.

“What are your reservations?” Tyler asks, standing by the dining table. He absently and not so absently touches the back of a chair Josh’s grandmother gave them. He knows that.

Josh scrapes eggs onto a plate. “You can’t be him. You can’t. It doesn’t make sense. They said—and then what you brought me—and—I don’t know. I moved on. I thought I moved on. I just got used to the empty house when you showed up, and it picked open all the sores I thought were healed.”

“I can leave.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I fixed you a plate.” Josh carries it for Tyler, maybe almost out of broken habit, and sets it on the table, in front of the chair Tyler is grabbing. Head lowered like this, as Josh places down silverware, Tyler makes note of the bump in the bridge of his nose. Once assumed to be evidence of a break from a bashing into a brick wall, the slight imperfection is more of a perfection. Whether it may be true the institution made Josh’s counterpart with a straighter nose in mind, it developed to this, and Tyler can’t help the tears that spring forward.

He tries to wipe them nonchalantly away with the side of his thumb.

But Josh sees. But Josh sees, and he noiselessly leaves the room to pluck tissues from a box on the stand beside the couch. Perhaps there for cleaning up messes or for the Tyler who wilted at every word, it serves its purpose again. Josh lightly pats Tyler’s cheeks dry, a bit taken aback by the odd discoloration of the tears. It’s nothing to raise concern, as they still appear human in comparison to Tyler’s skin. This brings forth Josh’s knowledge about synthetic people to the front of Tyler’s mind. Did Josh fully know about them and their maintenance? Did he only watch the videos found online? No, Tyler remembers after their first appointment they were given a handbook on how to care for a synthetic loved one, to see if they were really prepared to handle this new responsibility. Tyler remembers coming home and Josh swallowing down every word at any chance he had.

Josh knows. He wants to hug Tyler.

Tyler knows that.

“I’ll feed you,” Josh says, and pulls the chair out for Tyler to sit.

This is out of habit, too, a habit Tyler welcomes and doesn’t feel any shame in indulging. He sits, and Josh drops in the chair opposite. They don’t talk. Tyler opens his mouth when the fork prongs touch his lips.

The silence that falls between them is surprisingly comfortable and makes Tyler appreciate sitting in silence more than he did before.

As Tyler chews, Josh eats some himself, and as he chews, he tips more food into Tyler’s mouth. A give and a take, Tyler thinks this moment could go down as one of the more peaceful ones in his recent memory.

“Do you think I could take a shower while I’m here?”

Josh pokes what’s left of their meal onto the fork with his fingertip. He carefully lifts it to Tyler’s mouth. “Yes, I think you could,” he says, teasing and averting eye contact. “U-uh, you… If you need clothes, I… have some from Ty—” Josh’s grip loosens on the fork, and Tyler bites down on the prongs to prevent it from clattering onto the plate. He wraps his fingers around the handle as Josh wraps his own around the curls at the crown of his head. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

It’s evident Josh hasn’t been keeping it together. Oily hair, deep bruises under his eyes, cracks in his lips, Josh is textbook definition of “unable to let go.”

Finishing what’s left in his mouth, Tyler lays the fork on the plate and gingerly works Josh’s fingers from his hair. He holds Josh’s hands, the curve of his knuckles, and says, “It’s okay.”

That’s all he says. Josh ducks his head into his shoulder, the crook of his elbow, anywhere that allows him to cry with a readily accessible makeshift tissue nearby. He trembles, whimpers, and grows clammy in Tyler’s hands. Tyler sits there and has no idea what to do.

The Josh next to him is not the one in his memories. The Josh in his memories is strong, yielding, and unable to upset. He’s kind, considerate, and most of all, he provides the illusion of safety.

This Josh is far from that. Tyler knows why, and he squeezes Josh’s hands.

It hurts. It needs to hurt.

Josh raises his head.

Tyler says, “I’m here now. It might not be the way you imagined. I’m sorry you weren’t able to lay me down for my final rest, drive to the institution the same day, and watch me wake from my hibernation. I’m sorry you had to watch them close the lid on my casket and go to an empty house and attempt to return to any kind of normalcy. I’m really sorry the institution lied to you about me. I… I don’t know what I can do to begin to help you feel better, but… I’m here for you… dude.”

Josh rolls his eyes. “Dude.” He sniffs. “Look, it’s just going to take me a while or whatever. I’m not… You’re not… I’m in disbelief. That’s it.” Josh nods, convincing himself. “I’m in disbelief.”

Before Tyler can respond, Josh gets up from the table. He picks up the plate and dumps it into the sink. With his back to Tyler, he says, “I would tell you where the bathroom is, but you probably remember that.” And he leaves. He leaves. He walks out of the kitchen, through the back door, and leaves.

Tyler does remember the way to the bathroom. He stands from the table and leaves, too.

*

His insistent scrubbing turns his skin pink and his hair soft. He’s used to this.

He knows the bedroom is meant to be his, but as he stands in front of the closet and allows his eyes to pass along the shirts that drape over hangers, the jeans that litter the carpet floor, and the shoes that miss their matches, he feels disconnected.

For a second, he considers wearing Josh’s clothes—maybe a t-shirt, the NASA one with the little holes at the bottom, or maybe the yellow mountain dew one with the big holes at the bottom.

Ultimately, Tyler decides against this. It’s one thing for him to wear the clothes Josh saw him in every day; if Tyler were to pull on Josh’s clothes, that could shove Josh farther from him, and that’s the last thing Tyler wants to do.

So, he wears a hoodie with dancing men and a pair of jeans, nothing too extravagant. He doesn’t wear shoes. He doesn’t want to wear shoes.

It rained last night, the soil beneath the grass sure to be muddy, but when Tyler pushes off the last porch step, his feet sink into warm grass, grass the sun kissed upon waking.

Porch behind him, the bench on top of that, Tyler walks across the yard and toward the large oak tree, toward the tree house obscured by the forest’s attempt at reclaiming it.

Something pulls him here. Intuition, maybe—he isn’t surprised to find Josh, tucked into a corner, legs to his chest, rocking and sobbing.

Splinters in his feet and splinters in his hands, Tyler gently eases the door open. Old and rickety, Josh is so trapped in his thoughts the tree house door flying open and banging onto the floor doesn’t bring him to the present.

Tyler climbs inside and shuts the door, and Josh still rocks, still sobs.

The blanket Tyler stretched from wall to wall is here, not moved, and Josh’s shoes—the Josh doused with oil—are in the corner. Tyler sits with his back to them. He tries to remove a splinter from his palm with his teeth.

Josh says, “Hey.”

Tyler chooses to remain quiet. His teeth bring up blood.

Josh says, “I, uh, I never thought I’d see your hair like that again.”

Tyler drops his hand into his lap. “Yeah,” he says, and smiles. His skin hurts from where he chewed. He ignores the pain for as long as he’s able.

Soon, he’s rubbing his thumb along the small splinter over and over, just feeling it bend one way and then the other. A massage, pain relief, it does nothing but burn.

Everything burns.

Tyler blows out air through his teeth.

Josh watches him. “We can go back inside the house,” he suggests, and rolls onto the balls of his feet. He tugs on the sleeves of his sweatshirt, too pink for the atmosphere. “I don’t know how you feel about being up here after watching… what you did. I didn’t know you were up here until I watched the news and saw them talk about finding a body. I was in bed and going, ‘That can’t possibly be the woods behind my house.’ I went to search, and I found an oil trail, and I followed it back here… and…” Now lowering onto his bottom, sitting again, Josh chews on the inside of his cheek, taking a moment to choose his words. There’s a crinkle in his brow.

Tyler sticks his bleeding hand between his thigh and calf.

“Tyler and I used to come up here all the time and talk about our future. He eventually lost the strength to climb.”

Tyler knows all of this. He knows, and it twists his gut two hundred times over. Josh’s smile does nothing to help quell this.

“We used to watch the sunset together every evening up here. We would unfold a blanket just like this one”—Josh runs his hand along it—“and it would always be happy. We agreed that this would be safe, that if one of us needed some space, then we’d come here.”

“I didn’t mean to come up here, then,” Tyler says.

“That’s okay,” Josh says, and stares at him. “That rule only really applied when he came up here to sulk. I think that’s where we were different. When I get sad, I crave comfort, and when he got sad, he craved loneliness.” Josh pauses. “I’m sorry for referring to him as a separate entity. I know you’re him. I saw where they gave you a hard time at the institution. I don’t want to send you into another existential crisis. Like I said before, I’m in disbelief, and it might take me a while to get used to having someone else in the house again.”

“This isn’t kind to you at all,” Tyler says. “Normally, they would have… presented me as soon as… the other one left the picture. I’m sorry—that sounded—”

“I know what you meant,” Josh interjects.

Tyler continues, “If they had done what they were supposed to do, you wouldn’t have gone through the stages of grief. You would have had me, and we would have gone home, and maybe we would have held each other a little tighter when we went to bed that night, but you wouldn’t have had to face the day without me there anymore. But since they basically screwed us both up, you already processed, or are still processing, the grief of losing me. I guess it was kinder for me. It feels like I just lost you. I’ve been asleep this past month to try to get my memory back, and… I’m here now. I remember.”

“I’ve grieved for a very long time,” Josh admits, “probably ever since he got the cancer diagnosis. I find it hilarious that they ended up, whether accidentally or not, placing a stomach inside your head when he had brain cancer, and he used to say the cause of it was because he had too many bad thoughts.” Eyes shiny, Josh begins to laugh a laugh that’s more somber than cheerful. Laughs are meant to be cheerful. Josh wipes away tears now. “He joked around and compared his head to a stomach, said he ingested some bad food. I’m—I’m sorry, I—” Josh never finishes. He crumbles, folding in on himself, his forehead to his knees, and he rocks again, pathetic, like before, but Tyler is here, and two people crying together isn’t pathetic. It’s comforting. It makes sense.

Eventually, it dissipates into smothered snuffles and a silence more comfortable than should be expected.

Josh actually begins to smile with valor. When he pulls his legs to his chest, he doesn’t look pathetic. They’re just two boys sitting in their tree house.

Josh sits, Josh smiles, and Josh says, “I missed you a lot, Ty.”

And Tyler, Tyler can only scoot closer to Josh, a simple pick-up-and-drop, and bring his own legs to his chest. A mirrored position, almost, but Tyler’s hand is home to a splinter and a valley of drying blood. “I missed you, too,” he says, and welcomes Josh’s cheek to his shoulder, Josh’s tears to his shoulder, Josh’s eyelashes brushing his shoulder.

Tyler can only tilt to the side, a slight off-balance, and press his nose into Josh’s hair.

Josh smells good.

That could be the forest.

*

They come inside once the sun sets. They order pizza for delivery, and as they wait for it to arrive, Josh sits with Tyler at the kitchen table and uses a pair of tweezers to remove the remaining splinters from Tyler’s hands and feet.

Tyler has his foot propped on the table, Josh bent over, the light from the overhead fan making his hair look more pastel than the midnight color it is. Tyler gets lost in his curls.

“What were you doing when I showed up yesterday?” Tyler asks.

“Clipping my fingernails,” Josh says. “Don’t worry about it. I’m fast.”

They relocate to the living room to eat their pizza. They sit side by side, not even one cushion of space separating them, and consume as quietly as someone can when pizza is involved.

And then, Josh wants reassurance of the obvious. “So, you don’t have a vagina.”

Tyler has to laugh. He nearly chokes, but Josh is there to hand over a can of soda and an apology.

Upon recovering, Tyler says, “No, I don’t have a vagina. I thought it was strange, too. At first, I felt fake. I’m comfortable with my penis, though. It’s a, a, a good size.”

“Yeah, Tyler—you—you had vaginismus, we believed. Never got it formally checked out, but things eventually got better after I bought you some dilators. You hated those, though. We—oh, my God—we used to make a game of it. It’s so stupid now that I’m remembering it, but, like, we would place a bet to see how long you could clamp down on one. And then, whoever won or who was closest to however long we guessed, they’d get oral. You always won. Even though you said I knew your cunt like it was my own, you still knew it better.”

The corner of his cheek twitching into a small smile, Tyler picks at the dried cheese on the bottom of the pizza box, stretched on both of their laps. The cardboard is flimsy from all the grease. It doesn’t stop Josh from grabbing another slice and squeezing out the grease with his fingertips. He licks them clean, Tyler now piling all the dried cheese into the center of the box. “Yeah,” he says, and furrows his brow.

“You probably remember that, don’t you?”

“Don’t let that stop you from talking to me about stuff like that, though. We all tell the same stories to the same people.”

It’s now Josh’s turn to frown and scrape dried cheese off the side of the pizza box with his thumbnail. He chews what’s remaining in his mouth. “I guess you’re right there.”

The silence this time around isn’t nearly as comfortable. Tyler watches Josh open and close his mouth several times from the corner of his eye. Struggling to articulate the most simplest of ideas forming in his brain, Josh stutters and shakes his head in frustration. Tyler can’t decipher the sounds that leave his lips, only labeling them as something more animal than human. When Josh finally manages to form words, Tyler engages fully.

“Why did you want to be human? A-and before you get mad at me, let me explain. When I say ‘human,’ I mean… Tyler. To me, at least, I think most would agree that if they were a synthetic person who was thrown out, they would try to figure out who they used to be. But… if I was a synthetic person they threw out, I don’t think I would necessarily want to find out who I was. I would have seen it as, like… a second chance at life, I guess. I know that’s your purpose—fulfilling Tyler’s second chance, but you didn’t need to do that. If they threw you away—if they had thrown me away, I would try to get as far away as possible and create a new identity. I would try to be… me, whoever that may turn out being along the way. I don’t think I could… live a life that wasn’t mine to begin with, you know? Maybe it would be different if I had some kind of memories inside my brain. But… if I didn’t, I would go off and live somewhere else.”

“Whoever I’m supposed to be,” Tyler says, dried pizza sauce under his fingernail, “is whoever I’m meant to be. It’s whoever I want to be. I wasn’t anybody before this. I was always Tyler Joseph. I don’t need to take a Turing test to let people know I have feelings or I’m just as human as any other human. When I go to sleep, I’m Tyler. When I wake up, I’m Tyler. When I eat, when I drink, when I piss, when I fuck—even with my fake skin and fake blood and fake organs—even when I require oil and regular tune-ups, I’m Tyler. I’ve always been Tyler. I could never try to be anybody else because as soon as I took my first breath and opened my eyes, I was Tyler. Being Tyler was who I was meant to be. It… it was my purpose.

“I never knew my purpose. I thought maybe it could be trying to be happy. Maybe it was just something as simple as just living my life. I didn’t know how to do that either. My life never felt like my own until my memory came back to me. Who knows where I’d be now if I hadn’t remembered, or if I had been thrown away by myself. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now, since I found you. We’re both still figuring that out, and I think that’s okay. I think I’d be content to live the rest of my life with you. We don’t have to do anything particularly extravagant. We could sit on the couch and watch TV and eat more greasy pizza. As long as I’m with you, I’ll be happy. Because as much as I thought my purpose was attempting to find happiness by living my life, I now realize my purpose has been achieving happiness by living my life with you by my side until we grow old.”

“Tyler,” Josh says suddenly.

“What?”

“You talk too much.”

He should be offended. He should be getting up and leaving the room. He should be angry.

But he isn’t.

He laughs, and his laughter makes Josh laugh.

“You’re right,” he says, bowing his head to muffle his giggles into his knees. “You’re absolutely right. Tell me to shut up next time, okay?”

Josh folds the pizza box and lets it drop to the floor. For the first time since returning into each other’s lives, Josh holds back nothing when he hugs Tyler. Full on, soft, hard, squeezing, and twisting them around, Josh is a bear, and the laughter in his throat resembles a purr. Tyler pats Josh’s arm, rubs Josh’s arm, and finds himself smiling at the chipped, white nail polish on Josh’s and his toes.

“Dude,” Josh says, “gladly.”

*

The rain picks up that night. Paired with thunder and haphazard periods of slow sprinkles and damaging downpours, Tyler is thankful he’s inside. He knows he doesn’t rust, but the environment outside could make strange things happen. He wonders if the older models of his synthetic ancestors would rust instead of go gray. Would they have been allowed to age? Would they be forced to live the rest of their lives alone, wandering the world until they broke down? No, that wouldn’t have happened; Crystal Clear Institutes wouldn’t have allowed them to make that first step out of the front door.

Tyler sits on the bed, a leg tucked underneath him as he listens to the shower rival the rainfall. The constant beat from the bathroom over is more reminiscent of home than anything Tyler experienced thus far. He can hear Josh pick up shampoo bottles, body wash, shaving cream, and rearrange them on the shelf by color. Tyler remembers messing this up for Josh by reorganizing them in terms of size. He said it made more sense, and Josh squeezed some pink dye into Tyler’s conditioner behind his back. It didn’t show up in Tyler’s hair as well as Josh hoped, but in the sun, Josh teased. Josh ran his fingers through Tyler’s hair and called him a piece of uncooked meat.

The shower water shuts off.

Tyler eyes the bathroom door.

He’s meant to be in another room, probably on the couch. Josh told him he was going to take a shower, and then added, “I’ll see you in the morning.” Tyler isn’t meant to be in Josh’s room, in their room, but he sits on their bed and tries to focus on the television. The television isn’t on, though, and he doesn’t even attempt to make a grab for the remote.

Josh opens the door and leaves it cracked. Tyler smells mint. He smells the outdoors. He smells something else.

Standing in front of the bed in a sleeveless shirt and basketball shorts, not at all dry from his shower, Josh seems equal parts confused and delighted to find Tyler on the bed. He makes eye contact for a moment before looking away, a vivid blush to his cheeks. “Hey, man. Did you want something?”

Tyler’s still completely dressed, big hoodie and all. He doesn’t move. “Just wanted to—”

“Yeah.”

“—be near you.”

Josh nods. He nods again. “Yeah.”

“Is that… okay?”

Josh says, “Of course, it is,” but when he sits next to Tyler on the bed, there’s a sizable gap between them. When Josh sits, he sits with his head lowered. When Josh sits, he sits with that blush on his cheeks.

Tyler watches Josh. “My bag’s still in the… living room, but do you think I could charge my phone in here?”

“Your phone? I have your phone—” Josh bites his lip.

“Oh—oh, I… crap.” Tyler shakes his head, and Josh shakes his head, too. No words accompany him, so Tyler continues. “I got a new phone after… after… and so did—look, we can think of it as an upgrade. We got… free upgrades.”

Josh considers this. He glances at Tyler. “My phone was having a little trouble. I kept putting off taking it anywhere because I thought the money should be put… elsewhere.”

Tyler raises his hand, reaching out toward Josh, and promptly drops it onto the bed covers once his fingers skim along the air Josh occupied mere seconds ago. Josh stands with no warning, and he bends at the waist to inspect the contents of the nightstand. He’s back on the bed in no time, returning to sitting, returning to sit with less space between them. Criss-cross applesauce, their knees press together.

“I might be jumping the gun here, but… you came in here. You wanted to be near me. We—I—maybe I am getting ahead of myself.” Josh actually frowns, and he looks as if he means to stand from the bed again.

And yet, he stays. And yet, he stares at Tyler, and he goes, “I know we might need to work through some things. There’s obviously some… s-some… Tyler, I—I”—Josh’s voice shakes—“I just want everything to go back to how it was. I never moved on. I couldn’t move on. I never got used to having the house to myself. I lied to myself. I played pretend. I’m tired of crying myself to sleep every night. I’m tired of having to act like I’m okay. I’m tired of being alone.

“You’re here now,” Josh says, and holds out his palm, a simple gold wedding band in the middle of it, “and I don’t have to grieve anymore.”

Tyler closes his eyes.

“Something told me to keep it. I think I was going to wear it around my neck. I don’t really know. B-but… you’re here now. If you want it, you can have it. Like I said, I’m probably—”

“Yeah,” Tyler says, and presents his left hand for Josh, fingers fanning out, attempting to hold it steady to show he’s strong. He’s unsuccessful, though. This revelation doesn’t bother Josh, for he’s trembling just as much as Tyler.

“This isn’t how I pictured proposing to you,” Josh remarks, Tyler curling his fingers to admire the piece of jewelry. He notices Josh’s wedding ring never left his finger.

“You bawled like a baby when I got down on one knee,” Tyler says.

Josh sniffs. “Might do that again.”

“What did you tell me?” Tyler muses.

“Tyler and Josh Joseph,” Josh sighs, “what a couple of good names.”

A comfortable silence, and then, Josh sets his hands on Tyler’s shoulders. He slides them in, cupping the sides of Tyler’s neck, and he leans in, forehead to forehead, and he whispers, “Would it be okay if I kissed you, husband?”

That single word coaxes a shiver down Tyler’s spine. He wants to cry, he wants to scream, he wants to fly—instead, he closes the distance and kisses Josh. A small peck with closed lips, Tyler exhales, laughs, and goes in for a second kiss—and a third kiss—and a fourth kiss.

Tyler is unable to curb the smile on his face, not that he would want to in the first place. It fills him with glee, and it fills him with something a little more somber. As the smile falls, he, too, falls. And Josh welcomes it. He holds Tyler, cradles the back of Tyler’s head.

And Tyler does cry.

He doesn’t scream because that would be rude.

He doesn’t fly because he doesn’t know how.

He cries.

It’s quiet.

Josh notices as soon as the tears drip, drip, drips onto the curve of his neck. Almost identical to droplets from the shower, Tyler kisses them away. Parted lips and half-lidded eyes, once the tears touch his lips, he shoos them away by the slightest prod of the tip of his tongue. He lowers his mouth to Josh’s neck again. His intentions are not devious. He wants to be close, he wants… he wants.

“Tyler?” Josh’s voice box tickles Tyler’s lips. Tyler forces himself to stay, to kiss Josh’s neck again, to bump his nose against Josh’s jaw. His beard scratches Tyler, nothing too painful. Tyler kisses him, and he kisses him. He kisses Josh’s mouth, his chin, his cheek, his neck once more.

He smells so good.

He smells like home.

Tyler finds himself attaching to Josh and not letting go for the rest of the night.

*

In the morning, Tyler is reluctant to detach. It’s early, too early, and Josh is awake. He’s awake, and he rolls until Tyler is underneath him.

They don’t talk.

They kiss.

They touch.

Josh asks, “Can I blow you?”

Tyler laughs. “Are you sure?”

“Is it gonna taste bad?”

“It’s not toxic.”

A playful narrowing of his eyes, Josh says, “Lemme see the little guy.”

Josh pushes himself back until he’s on the balls of his feet, helping Tyler pull off his jeans by the legs while Tyler works on shoving them down by the waist. “It’s not little,” Tyler mumbles, which makes Josh laugh harder.

“Just messing with you, man.” Tossing Tyler’s pants off the bed, Josh hooks his fingers into Tyler’s boxer briefs, casting them aside, as well. It’s quiet work. Tyler watches, a tad anxious, and grows even more anxious when Josh says, “I thought you had your tattoos,” with his eyes on Tyler’s thigh.

“Not that one,” Tyler says, and nonchalantly pulls the hem of his hoodie lower.

Josh slides his hands to rest on Tyler’s thighs.

Tyler looks at him. “It was too personal. I thought maybe we could…”

“Next time we’re in town, okay? I don’t like the thought of giving you a stick-and-poke version.” Conversation over, Josh’s eyes redirect to Tyler’s lap. He shoves up the sweatshirt, allowing it to gather on Tyler’s abdomen, where Tyler holds it. Tyler’s raising onto his elbow, too, peering down to gauge Josh’s reaction.

In the recesses of his memory, he knows Josh doesn’t care about genitalia. Josh watched the rest of Tyler’s memories on the flash drive. He knows what happened in the tree house, oil and gas and bare skin and all. So, when he looks at Tyler’s dick, there’s nothing here that should be a surprise. And there isn’t. Josh smiles, though. He smiles, kisses Tyler’s nose, and murmurs, “There he is.”

Tyler rolls his eyes and smacks at Josh’s face, but Josh pushes farther, shoving Tyler onto his back, and kisses Tyler’s cheek, his nose again, all the way down to his neck. His lips are light, soft, and they are immobile as Josh lies on top of Tyler, just lying there, breathing, making Tyler squirm, making Tyler arch his back and wrap his arms around Josh’s shoulders. “Please,” he says, and doesn’t know why. Josh’s exhales on his skin, they dance, and they heat, and for a second, Tyler hates him. He sends his fists into Josh’s shoulders, delicate pounds, and Josh laughs at Tyler’s feeble attempts.

“You loser,” Tyler hisses, and pushes Josh until Josh is between his legs, and lower still.

Josh gasps in faux shock. “I’m the loser?”

“You’re exploiting my erogenous zones.”

“Just wanted to see if—”

Tyler weaves his fingers through the hair at the back of Josh’s head and guides Josh to his groin. “Uh-huh.”

Josh is smugger than he needs to be right now with a face full of pubes. But he is, and Tyler eases his grip on Josh’s hair. Josh is appreciative of that, if only to allow him more neck movement. He looks up at Tyler, just to look at him, and places a kiss right on Tyler’s hipbone.

Tyler closes his eyes.

“You okay?” Josh asks.

Tyler says, “Yes,” and Josh kisses his hip again.

“I’m okay, too.”

*

As they eat a breakfast of their choice cereal, Tyler restores everything to their new phones. Josh watches nearby, amazed, unable to keep a smile off his face at the prospect of a new cell phone.

Spoon tucked into his cheek, bowl in one hand and the new phone in the other, Josh fills with glee. His eyes are bright, laughter radiates from him, Tyler never wants Josh to stop looking like this.

“You’re so… much smarter than me,” Josh says, and Tyler shovels more Waffle Crisp into his mouth.

When it comes to reintroducing Tyler to their family, they start small—and not at all in the family.

“Jenna,” Josh says, an epiphany apparent from his expression. “She loves you, Tyler. She always has. If there’s anyone we should go to first without fear of an awful reaction, it’s her.”

Tyler thinks he may have already met her at a gas station. He keeps this part to himself and simply nods his head and offers a smile. “Let’s go.”

“And if something bad happens, we’ll go straight to the tattoo parlor, and you can get all that agony poked away.”

“I think I’ll save that for when I see my mom.”

Josh decides a public place would be the best choice for everybody involved. “Less people are inclined to have a public breakdown,” he reasons, “and considering the last time I saw her, she might be more likely to have a bit of a breakdown.”

“What happened?” Tyler asks, wiping away toothpaste foam.

Josh pulls his NASA t-shirt over his head. He does this to ensure he doesn’t meet Tyler’s eyes in the mirror. “She was at the hospital with me when you… And then, she sat next to me at the funeral. She held my hand. She told me if I ever needed someone to talk to, I could talk to her. Except for work and the grocery store, I haven’t really left the house.”

Tyler spits in the sink basin. “I’ve been asleep for the past month, so whatever you’ve managed to do is loads better than whatever I did.”

“When you put it like that, then… yeah.” Josh searches for a matching pair of shoes next. “I’ll drive us.”

*

They meet at a park.

Beneath a canopy of leaves shielding them from the sun, Tyler stands by the tree’s roots and watches Josh and Jenna share a hug. Kept in the shade with a baseball cap on his head, he does his best to blend in and remain unseen until he chooses to become seen. It works, for the most part.

Jenna touches Josh’s arm and asks how he’s been doing. “I was worried about you,” she says. “I thought you needed your space. I didn’t—”

“It’s okay,” Josh says. “It’s fine.”

Despite his incognito nature, Jenna catches his eye. At first, she doesn’t have much of an impression; she goes right back to Josh—but then, she slowly turns her head—but then, she recognizes the black hat obscuring his face—but then, she doesn’t need to see his facial features. She knows him by his slouching, by the bands along his arm, by the perpetual frown. She knows him, and she doesn’t make a scene. It’s like the night at the gas station. She gives him a curious look. She waves her finger, a come-hither motion.

So, Tyler makes his way toward them. He stands next to Josh. He wants to stare at her, but he’s scared of what he might see in her eyes. He doesn’t think he can make it through that again.

He doesn’t have to worry. Josh is speaking for him.

It’s muted, like he’s underwater.

“You know how I called you and said it didn’t work? It actually did work. I didn’t ask for many details, you know… I was just so happy he got his second chance in the end.”

She throws her arms around his neck. Instinctively, he responds, hugging her, twisting her, rocking them from side to side. He feels her wet cheeks against his shoulder.

“Are you upset with me?” Josh asks.

“Why would I be upset?” Jenna says into Tyler’s shoulder.

“I didn’t tell you about him until now.”

“I’m not upset. I can’t be upset. He’s alive.”

Tyler kisses her ear. Over her shoulder, Tyler smiles. Josh smiles back.

*

No matter what Josh said to her, as soon as they sit down to grab lunch, she sets her elbows on the table, leans in close, and whispers, “Now, tell me the truth.”

Josh babbles.

Tyler covers Josh’s mouth and gives his hand a reassuring pat. After Josh smiles, Tyler turns to Jenna, leans in close, and tells her the truth.

And Jenna just shakes her head. “It’s like you guys forget my brother’s a lawyer. Email everything you have to me. I’ll forward it to him. Let me help you.”

This time—this time, this time, this time, Tyler accepts.

*

It makes sense to go to Tyler’s side of the family first. The transition, it’ll be difficult. It was easy with Jenna; going from one extreme to the next can’t be good for either of them, but that’s why the tattoo parlor is their next stop.

Josh’s family, Josh says, can wait until tomorrow. “It’s going to be a long day,” he tells Tyler, passing his phone from each hand. “Besides, I think my mom would make us all go out to eat or something.”

“Do you think they’re going to trust me?” Tyler fiddles with the window, watching it slide down and slide up.

“It might be… slow. Even I was distrustful of you at first.”

“They won’t know what actually happened, though. You picked through that flash drive.”

“It’d be different if it was just you showing up, but I’m here. They should have no problem believing me. Look at my face.”

Tyler does. “It’s a very believable face.”

“Dang right it is! If things start going sour, I’ll pick you up and run out the door with you, and we’ll go on a second honeymoon.”

Tyler shakes his head. He pushes the window button one last time, leaving it cut in half. “Do we even have the money for that?”

“I’m not high maintenance. We could go to, like, Disney.”

“Still costs money.”

“When you started to get worse, your boss told us not to worry about you coming in anymore. He said to focus on getting better. It was only until after the funeral he let me know he still had you on the payroll. He transferred the money to me soon after that, and then expressed his condolences you wouldn’t be returning to us. I don’t think he’d be opposed to you coming back there to work again.”

“Where did I work?” Tyler asks, just for Josh to continue talking.

“You fixed computers, and on the side, synthetic people.” Josh looks at his phone, smiling.

“Did you text them yet?”

“I thought about telling them I wanted to show them something. Should I… just say I’m… down the street?”

Tyler tilts his head back on the headrest and laughs. He laughs into his hands. “You’re, like, crap—just tell them you’re on your way to my parents’ house, and then just… sit here for a few minutes, and then you gotta take an absurdly amount of time to drive down this street and park in their front yard.”

“Park right in the front yard?”

“Ruin their fucking grass. Shred it up.”

“If I didn’t know any better,” Josh says, turning the key in his ignition, “I’d think you hated your family.” Josh gives him a knowing look, which Tyler gives in return, albeit more stoic. “Dude, it’s gonna be okay. We don’t have to stay long.”

“Do you think they’re going to ask about what’s in my pants or about our sex life?”

A woman walking her dog trots past Josh’s car.

“I think… that’s none of their business.”

Tyler picks at his cuticles. “You’re going to knock on the door, right?”

“Just stand behind me and try not to evaporate.”

He tugs his hat lower on his head. “Maybe don’t text them,” he says. “Maybe we can show up. It’ll be a surprise.”

Even now, even with synthetic skin and synthetic anxiety, Tyler hates being around his family. He thought Josh actually parking in the lawn would have cheered him up, but if anything, it makes him feel worse.

He doesn’t know why he’s here, or why seeing his family should inherently be a good idea.

It could be the way he remembered them staring at him at the family reunions he forced himself to attend. It could be the way he remembered telling his mom he had cancer, and her first reaction was to ask, “Was it because of all that testosterone you took?”

It could even be how she didn’t really have a hand in any of the wedding preparation.

It could be how she thought he could still give her a biological grandchild.

Tyler tugs on Josh’s shirt sleeve.

Josh holds out his hand, and Tyler laces their fingers together.

“You know what?” Tyler whispers, Josh scooting over in the driver’s seat to hear him better.

Tyler repeats it. “You know what?”

“What?” Josh squeezes, the pressure turning his knuckles white.

“I would rather they think I’m dead.”

So, instead of seeing his family, Tyler enjoys the ride to the local tattoo parlor. Because of Josh’s inability to talk directly on the phone without amounting to a stuttering mess—and more so when operating a vehicle—Tyler asks about their walk-in policy and their experience with synthetic humans. After smiling and shooting Josh a thumbs up, Josh heads there straight away.

By the end of the hour, Josh’s name is on Tyler’s upper thigh again.

The artist who did it was nice to Tyler and made small talk whenever they could. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Tyler appreciated the conversation.

“I always liked doing tattoos on synthetic people more. Our skin holds ink a lot better—vivid colors, too. Do you want anything else done? I have time.”

Tyler says, “No.”

He says, “This is perfect. Thank you.”

At home, they watch the sunset from their tree house.

“What do you think Jenna’s brother can do for us?” Josh asks, his eyes downcast.

“I don’t see change happening anytime soon.”

“You never know.” Josh shrugs.

“Yeah. You never know.”

They go inside once darkness looms. Tyler takes Josh into the bedroom and, lips to Josh’s ear, says, “I want you to fuck me.”

It’s painless. It’s tender.

It’s how it was supposed to be.

No matter the strength in his bones, Tyler breaks down in Josh’s arms. This is less than enchanting, complete with drying semen on his stomach and a tear in his lip. But Josh clings to him because he’s also less than enchanting. Josh would buy a flower shop instead of a bouquet.

“Do I deserve this?”

Josh presses his palm to the side of Tyler’s face, his thumb becoming the tail of Tyler’s eyebrow as he strokes, as he nods, as he blinks away tears. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”

He still dreams of golden rings and doves against clouds. Josh is here with him. Josh will always be here with him.

*

Tyler’s family is present when they visit Josh’s family.

It’s a mock reunion, done in the Duns’ backyard, and expected to be as joyful as any occasion with the Duns.

Josh said he needed to show them something. He called his mom to tell her this. Judging by the tone of his voice, his mom guessed it could only be something good. And when it comes to Josh, anything good that happens to him of recent is because of Tyler.

Tyler doesn’t know who told his family. At this point, he can’t be angry. He’s in a semi-public venue. If he were to act out of the ordinary—and certainly his mom, of all people, would assume an outburst of anger to be out of the ordinary—he isn’t fond of what could possibly happen after. Maybe they’d try to send him back to the institution and claim there’s a defect.

He can hear the blood in his veins.

“Oh,” Tyler says.

Josh steps in front of him. “I’ll lead.”

“No, it’s—”

Tyler’s name, Tyler’s health, and Josh’s own health comprises the afternoon. Everybody wants to know if Josh is going to sign up for his own second chance. He’s bashful. He says, “Haven’t given it much thought.”

Tyler can’t go two seconds without someone touching him and saying, “Tyler, is that really you?”

He faces pointless trivia and outdated family factoids to prove his identity. His mother, in particular, is tough to accept him. She says, “I’m sorry. I can’t see my baby in you.”

Josh’s brother and dad grill out in the yard, while the rest of them sit on the back porch. Tyler is next to Josh, in his rightful place, and stares at his mother across from him. She looks mildly disturbed.

“What do you want me to do?” Tyler says. He steeples his fingers. He doesn’t break eye contact.

“I don’t want you to do anything. I told you I didn’t want you to do this. Josh was on my side for a little while, until you got him to come around. I’ll say it again: This isn’t natural. You aren’t my child. You died, and that was it. What you are now, this isn’t really you. You might have the same face, the same voice, and you might have similar memories, but when I look at you, I see a machine. When I look at you, I don’t feel anything familial. I feel sick. You stole my baby’s face, and you’ve tricked everybody here into believing a lie. No matter what you do or say to try to convince me otherwise, I will always see you as an artificial replacement.”

“But that’s what I am,” Tyler says, and leans in with his elbows on his knees. “I am an artificial replacement. I was made with that purpose in mind. What you’re seeing is exactly what I am, so why aren’t you connecting the dots?”

“This is evil. You’re not supposed to bring back the dead. The dead are gone for a reason.”

“What if Dad were to die tonight? Or tomorrow? Would you be prepared for that?”

“No one is prepared for that.” She thinks she’s caught him, with that bitter smile.

“Now we can be prepared. Nobody has to die in an accident anymore. Nobody has to die with business left unattended. Nobody has to die without a chance at really living their life to the fullest.”

“Some people in this world,” she says, grasping at straws at the bottom of a moldy barrel, “do not deserve a second chance.”

Josh grabs Tyler’s wrists when he stands abruptly. Tyler’s dad is up, too, making a point he wouldn’t hesitate to get between Tyler and his wife. Josh’s family, nervously spectating the conversation, now seems ready to raise their arms to defend Tyler. From the yard, Josh’s dad and brother stop cooking to peer on tiptoe.

Tyler’s brothers, Zack especially, are furious. At who exactly, Tyler can’t be positive.

His sister looks ready to cry.

Josh pulls on Tyler’s wrists, but Tyler won’t budge.

Tyler won’t look anywhere but at his mom. “I wasn’t going to tell you,” he says, steady, “because I thought you wouldn’t care. You didn’t respect me when I was alive, so why should I have given you the time of day when I was reborn? I didn’t want you here, but you came, and now”—he steps forward as far as he can with Josh holding him at bay and his father sliding forward—“you’re just gonna have to deal with your artificial-at-best son.”

She stands. No one stops her. She goes into the house. No one stops her. No one stops her.

Tyler feels Josh let go of his wrists.

Zack says, “I can’t believe she talked to you like that.”

Tyler turns his head.

Zack says, “Why can’t she be grateful? Why can’t—?”

“Hey,” their father cuts in, “she’s your mother. Don’t talk—”

“I wouldn’t treat my children like that,” Josh’s mother says.

Tyler wonders how his mother would have reacted if he wore a romper.

*

The dinner for that evening is more than a little awkward.

Tyler pretends his mom isn’t there.

It works out.

When it comes to saying goodbye, Tyler hugs his siblings longer than he originally intended. They know this is their brother, faux nuts and bolts and all, and they won’t pass up this opportunity.

His father shakes his hand. At least he isn’t scared to touch his son.

“You look good,” Josh’s mom tells him, “just like the day you two got married.”

“Stop that,” Tyler says.

On the drive home, Tyler pokes Josh in the side and states matter-of-factly, “We deserve to go to Disney after that.”

Josh smiles. “How does next week sound?”

Tyler thinks his purpose is in that smile. Tyler doesn’t think that’s pathetic.

*

In a Disney hotel, with a woodsy ambience and large windows where they can see the sunset, Tyler gets a call from Jenna.

Crowded around the device, Tyler and Josh stick their heads together and listen to her voice lift from the speakers.

It’s some of the greatest words Tyler has ever heard.

“My brother thinks you guys have a case—a very good one. Like, you two could actually do something here.”

It takes a month for any results to surface.

After countless emails, phone calls, and the occasional coffee with Jenna’s brother, Josh shouts for Tyler to come into the living room. Leaping from the shower, forgoing a towel and neglecting to dry at all, Tyler skids to a stop in front of the television. “What?” he asks, and doesn’t need Josh to reply.

Seeing “CEO of Crystal Clear Institutes Steps Down Among Upcoming Lawsuit” flashing across the screen is enough for Tyler. He doesn’t need anything else. He doesn’t even need to watch the playback of an interview he coaxed Mr. Mister and the doctor at the free clinic into doing. He doesn’t need that.

He needs Josh.

Tyler smacks Josh in the arm. “Let me get dressed. Meet me outside.”

He remembers to put on shoes.

Once outside, he loops his fingers through Josh’s and sprints across the lawn. Over the green grass and past the tall tree house, they break into the woods, the forest, and Tyler screams. He screams at the top of his lungs, and Josh screams with him. Matching smiles and clasped hands, they shout at each other until they go hoarse, and then more after that.

Tyler isn’t scared anymore.

*

“Could you sing for me?” Josh requests that night, barely able to keep his eyes open. Lazy, he reaches up with his hand, grabbing weakly at where he thinks Tyler is lying.

Tyler deliberately scoots away. “I can’t sing,” he teases.

“Yes, you can.”

Josh’s hand finds his chest, bare, and skims along his ribs, his nipples, expecting scar tissue and finding none.

Tyler rolls closer, rotating onto his side. He says, “Okay.” He says, “What do you want me to sing?” He’s on his back again, Josh climbing, Josh half-climbing, Josh collapsing on Tyler’s chest with his ear to Tyler’s heart and his thumb petting the hair beneath Tyler’s navel.

“Something personal,” he whispers.

“Something that means something to you,” he says.

Tyler pushes Josh’s hair off his forehead and counts the pimples that shy away when the curls slip through the cracks of his fingers. “I think I have something like that.”

“Put up or shut up,” Josh grumbles, the last word escaping his mouth in a whoosh of air leaving his lungs. Tyler wraps his arms around Josh’s torso and turns them, rolls them, and he stretches himself over Josh. His face buried in Josh’s neck, the stray strands of Josh’s beard tickling his temple, Josh cups the curve of his skull and lies there and breathes.

And slowly, Tyler breathes with him.

“I don’t know why I,” Tyler coos, “feed on emotion.”

He can feel Josh’s heart next to his mouth.

Tyler gropes for Josh’s hand, his wedding band a generous pressure. “There’s a stomach inside my brain…”