HELPER12, Jack Blaine [reading in the dark .TXT] 📗

robotics of course, but they can fool you pretty well if you just fuzz your eyes a bit.  Who knows what a real tiger looks like anyway?  There haven’t been any for over a century.  It’s a place that I would have loved to have gone, if I could ever have afforded the ticket.

I don’t think we’re going to the Commons.

The Driver doesn’t look at me or Jobee.  He asks Thomas if we’re ready to go and when Thomas says we are, he goes.  We shoot out of the courtyard; he drives fast, faster than he did when he brought me to the Sloanes’ place.  I sit in the back with Jobee, who is in a special seat designed for babies.  Thomas sits in the middle section facing us.  He watches Jobee hit the padded bar that holds him in his seat.  He smiles when Jobee widens his eyes at the bar, as though he is commanding it to open up and let him go.  I get a squeeze toy out and hand it to Jobee to distract him from his imprisonment.

We arrive in the city in no time at all, and when I look out the window of the vehicle, I see the Commons gate.  I feel hopeful for a moment, but then I realize that Thomas has to have us dropped off here.  He told Helper and the Driver we were coming here.

Thomas is already out of the vehicle, unfolding a baby whizby I haven’t seen before.  Once he has it locked into shape, he reaches in for Jobee.  I unlock the bar on his child seat and hand him out.  Thomas settles him in the whizby, making sure he’s buckled up.  He takes hold of the handle and clicks the on button.  The whizby lifts up off the ground by about three inches, and hovers.  Jobee laughs, delighted at the new sensation.

“Ha!”  Thomas laughs too.  “I always loved that, too.  I wanted to ride in my whizby long after I’d outgrown it.”

I climb out of the vehicle.

“Is this your old whizby?”

“No, this was . . .  not mine.”  His smile disappears.  I want to ask why, but something about the look on his face prevents me.  I start to hitch Jobee’s bag of supplies up over my shoulder.

“Oh!  I forgot.”  Thomas flicks the whizby’s button and Jobee is lowered gently to the ground.  Then he unsnaps something on the back, and a storage bin unfolds.

“That stuff can go here.”  Thomas takes the bag from me and stows it in the bin.  “All right, now I think we’re set.  Be back by four, Driver?”  He slaps the back of the vehicle.

The Driver pulls away.

“Shall we?”  Thomas flicks the whizby button and Jobee floats just above the ground again.  Thomas holds the handle with one hand and gestures toward the Commons gate with the other.

I stare at him.  “We’re really going to the Commons?”

“I had to tell them something.  Besides, he’ll like it, don’t you think?”  Thomas nods toward Jobee.

“He’ll like it.”  I’m still not moving toward the gate.

Thomas gets five steps away before he notices I’m not with him.  He turns and floats the whizby back to me.  He leaves it in hover-mode.

“What?”

“What happens in there?”  I’ve decided that he must have some clandestine meeting set up with slavers, that somewhere near the Pomeranian dog exhibit he’ll swap me and Jobee for some untold amount of riches, and then he’ll tell the Driver we were snatched.  People get snatched all the time, and they never get found as far as I can tell, so it will be the perfect story.

Thomas is frowning at me.  “In there,” he says, “we look at the exhibits, we buy some snacks, we go out the far gate which lets us out right by the Public Information Center.  Then, we go get the information you wanted about him.”  Points down at Jobee, who is too busy waving his hand in front of his face to notice us.

“Then, maybe we grab lunch.  And then we cut back through the Commons to get back here for our ride home.”

I keep staring at him.  Finally I nod and start walking.

When we get to the gate, he scans his C-card and we enter.

Just like that.  I’m in a place I could never afford to visit if I saved for an entire year, and he’s paid for three tickets with no thought at all.  I step forward in a daze, stunned by the displays I see ahead of us.  There are lions and tigers and, yes, there’s a bear!  I realize my mouth is hanging open and I snap it shut.  When I look around to see if he noticed, I find him still at the entrance, just inside the gate.  He’s considering me, tilting his head like he’s figuring out a puzzle.  I wait for him to catch up.

When he reaches me we fall into step, almost like any other rich, young couple out for a day with their baby, strolling the Commons.  Except he’s a homosexual, I’m a kidnapped Baby Helper and Jobee is a bought and paid for child.

“You thought I was going to sell you, didn’t you?”  Thomas doesn’t turn his head to look at me, but I know he’s peeking from the sides of his eyes.

I don’t look at him either, but I nod.

“Look,” I say.  “Let’s show William the bear.”

Chapter Fifteen

Jobee loves everything about the Commons.  I have to admit that I, too, am enchanted; I’ve never seen anything like it.  The way the tiger moves in his fake jungle, slinking along ready to leap out at us any moment, is entertaining.  But what I find truly fascinating is the way the other people here behave, as though nothing at all could be expected of them except what they are doing today; simply enjoying themselves.  There are no furtive glances.  No looking to see if any police are in the crowd, no fear of being attacked by street roughs.

It