Synthesis

Chapter 3: I Assure You, My Love, I See Nothing Amiss

It takes exactly two hours and seventeen minutes to complete the intended eight hours’ worth of work he has been tasked with for the day. Vision immediately detected that, even by the second day on the job, he’d have to slow down the pace with which he was processing data as to not draw attention, but, even at the slowest pace possible, the results are far from optimal in regard to appearing “normal.” He is beginning to doubt he is capable of embodying the term. He wonders, even, if he knows what the concept truly means. 

Vision feels himself frowning, glancing at the stack of finished computational forms in his outbox, before sneaking a look at those around him. None of his colleagues had come close to finishing the work they had been tasked with this morning, as he suspected.  He sighs, glancing down at the skin of his hands, disguised a lighter hue instead of the normal dark gray of his actual form. It took work, to keep up the disguise day in and day out. He frowns once more, running a hand through the lightly shaded hair on his head that was also part of his disguise when, after bringing his hand back down, the light catches the silver around his ring finger on his left hand. 

A constant. Wanda is his constant, he reminds himself, but here he is, shoving off to a job that he still does not comprehend the ultimate purpose of while she...what was she doing? It hasn’t occurred to him to ask, but seeing that almost all the wives of Westview are not employed, it is understandable that Wanda would not work either. To appear normal. ( Again, that word. Grating and harsh and jagged, all the way down to his processing core.) 

To have her absent from his side though, aches, somewhere deep within. 

To distract himself, at 10:21am, he asks for more work. He receives it. And 12:02, most of the men break for lunch. Lunchtime is tricky, but if anyone asks him about why he hasn’t eaten yet, he tells them he’s eaten earlier, or later. He had a large breakfast. He will be eating a large dinner.  At 12:38pm, asks for more work, and he receives it. At 2:35pm, he asks for more work after that, and he receives it. Over and over again, it is easy calculations barely requiring the most elementary knowledge of algebra, and he finds, as the day goes on, his boredom grows. By the time the sun begins setting in the late afternoon, Vision mimics a stretch, and pulls his briefcase out from under his desk. In a random curious moment, he opens it, to notice it’s entirely empty. Vision frowns, and then closes it shut again, before saying his goodbyes to Norm and the others, and walking casually into the fairly busy hallway, pushing the button for the elevator. 

The illuminated downward arrow stays that way for many long moments, and Vision reflexively tightens his grip around his suitcase. Something about the wait, about the number of people gathering around him, or the fact that he could merely phase through the floor is unnerving, and by the time they file into the elevator, Vision finds himself doubling down on his efforts to remain effectively disguised. 

As Vision steps out onto the bustling streets of Town Square, he realizes the weather is, once again, at optimal temperature of a normal human’s comfort, but it does nothing to ease the mounting anxiety he feels. He finds himself picking up his pace suddenly, body itching to fly, and he instead focuses his effort to keep himself firmly planted to the ground as he walks quickly home.

By the time he arrives at 2800 Sherwood Drive, he is practically running, and just as he stops short of the door, almost phasing through it and remembering there are probably neighbors about, he is certain he hears the eerie sound of a chorus of laughter again. He stops, confused, but then determinedly opens the door, shouting, “Darling!” as he goes. 

He pauses, staring at the house in an immense amount of disbelief. He blinks, demanding identify of his mind again, already anticipating the response. The knowledge of Internet offline floats through his mind again. Based on signposts and street addresses, you are at 2800 Sherwood Drive, Westview, NJ 08801.

The living room is smaller, he is sure of it. As he sets the briefcase down on the landing, he realizes the wood burning stove has been replaced by a mantle. A large staircase now sits to his left, presumably leading to an upstairs that had been absent before now, and the decor and kitchen have altered in style and design. Vision blinks again, willing his mind to understand, just as Wanda descends from the stairs. 

He looks up to her, and she, too, seems different. Her tightly curled hair is loose now, longer, and instead of a silver dress she sports a blouse and knee-length skirt. Her eyebrows raise in concern as she notices him, standing in the living room, seemingly lost.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

He blinks once, and then again, and then forgets why he was bothered in the first place, as she slips her hands in his, and they stand together, just like that. 

“Nothing, darling. Just a long day,” he murmurs, and she smiles, almost sadly, at him.

“I missed you,” she breathes, sliding a hand up to his face with concern, and suddenly he is aware she is also, somehow troubled, and his confusion dissipates as he is tasked with soothing her. He pulls her closer, lying her head on his chest, phasing to his usual dark grey and silver as he does so. She feels it happen, he thinks, and she leans back slightly, her smile widening.

“There’s my husband,” she says, and he smiles slightly, before leaning in to kiss her gently. It only lasts a few precious moments before they part, and he looks at her again with intense focus, all other concerns and worries bleeding out of the frame.

“Have you eaten? Is there anything you need?” he asks seriously, and the troubled, dark cloud within her seems to lift, as she smirks and rolls her eyes playfully.

“Will there ever be one day when you aren’t absolutely, one hundred percent concerned for my well being, constantly? I do know how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich after all,” she says, tightening her grip on his hand, and then gently pulling him along into the kitchen.

“It seems an imperative part of the job I am tasked with as your husband, darling, to care for your wellbeing,'' he says, watching her as she fetches a bottle of wine from the counter.

“Are we celebrating something?’ he adds, as she snags a glass from the cabinet. 

“Yes,” she murmurs, grinning at him mischievously.

“Allow me,” he says, moving to her to take the bottle of wine and opener, quickly popping the cork and pouring her a glass.

“We have lived in Westview for a whole week,” she says. “We’ve survived a whole week without anyone noticing anything well...odd.”

“Good god, it’s been that long already? That does seem like a cause for celebration,” he says, handing her the glass of wine, which she sips sheepishly, his eyes never leaving her face, even as a chorus of laughter still fills the background, which he is beginning to ignore. She takes his hand again, and they walk over to the couch. (A floral pattern...had it not been a solid light gray before?)

“Oh! And I forgot to tell you. Agnes roped me into participating in the Westview elementary talent show,” Wanda says, eyes shifting to the left. “I, uh, signed us up. It seemed important, somehow, that we participate.”

“Talent show, eh?” he asks, lifting a brow as he looks at her. “And just what’s your talent going to be, other than captivatingly beautiful?” he asks, and Wanda laughs a little into her wine glass. It is in moments like these that everything feels new, as if they are not married, as if they have not known each other for years. It is a contradiction, Visions supposes, the love he feels for her being so overwhelmingly new and so entirely engrained all at once.

“We are going to do...a magic act,” Wanda is saying, a mischievous glint in her irises.

“Is that right?” Vision asks.. “And just how do we pull that off? Walk through walls, move things without touching them?” he smirks.

“No. Just all the fake nonsense. You know. Pull a rabbit out of a hat, have someone pick a card, that sort of thing,” she grins. 

“And I’m assuming from the look on your face you want me to be said magician?” he asks, and her smile widens. 

“Just an excuse to see you in coattails, sweetheart,” she teases, and he laughs gently, before kissing the palm of her hand. Meanwhile, he notices the glass of wine has stained her lips just a shade redder, and something faulty bit of coding deep inside in his mind makes taking his eyes off of them an impossible feat.  

“Only if you’ll be my talented, lovely assistant,” he murmurs, eyes still on her lips, and when she finally notices, her cheeks bloom an even deeper red, and she giggles a little. Vision secretly loves what a mere half glass of wine does to his wife. The sadness she sometimes tries to hide dissipates momentarily, and she sees somehow younger, perhaps, or more naive, or simply less hardened by the woes of the world. ( But just what had she gone through to make him think that? Just what would have made him assume her heart ached, as if she had played a major part in some rendition of a Shakespearean tragedy? Weren’t they happy?) 

“What?” she asks finally, setting down her wine glass, and he shakes his head a little, trying to loosen the grip her spell has on him.

“Nothing,” he murmurs. “It is just that..I...sometimes wonder how I became so unbearably lucky,” he adds. She smiles, but her eyes are a deep, swirling gray as she stares into his own, and they sit there like that for a moment, in the silence. 

“Sweetheart,” she finally murmurs, suddenly becoming well-beyond serious.

“Yes, my love?” he asks.

“Kiss me,” she demands, and his eyes narrow slightly as he obliges her, leaning into her touch, as if out of a gnawing hunger, as if out of a years’ long sleep or desperation, and then her arms are snaking over his shoulders and around his neck, and he deepens the kiss, knowing intuitively by now just how to do so. (An intricate language, the steps leading up to making love. And the lovemaking itself: a delicate, complex, entirely human act that he had somehow managed to learn to take his part in. Just how had he learned to do it? His coding had not helped him in this regard, of that he was entirely sure.) 

“Shall we take this conversation into the bedroom, darling?” he finally manages to ask, breaking the kiss to give her a chance to breathe, something that he himself doesn't quite need to do, and she grins at him. 

“ Yes. But we really must do something about those twin beds,” she quips. “Because it’s getting entirely ridiculous.”

He lets out a breathless laugh, but says nothing more as he feels compelled to grab her by the hand, leading her up the newly-manifested stairs, forgetting they were never before tonight, never there before now. 

--

If he was to curve the ball at approximately an 85 degree angle, throwing it with just enough force to have it travel at exactly eighteen miles per hour, he calculates that he can obtain his fifth strike in a row. But as the equations of strike rate and conversion rate on spares fill his mind, immediately understanding the slither of human probability of such a feat, versus his own, he catches a glimpse of Wanda, whose eyes are wide, and it’s impossible not to notice the slight shake of her head. Meanwhile, Fred from work and his wife Linda are cheering him on, everyone has a beer in hand, and Vision frowns slightly.

It had been Wanda’s idea to sign them up for this bowling league nonsense. And he admits, it  has been surprisingly enjoyable so far. The dancing lights and songs of Bobby Lewis and Ray Charles had lifted both their spirits from the daily grind, and he would be the first to admit that his wife looks entirely adorable in a bowling shirt and shoes, the name “Wanda” stitched into the right pocket. But the sport is, like any other, entirely too easy, and whereas Wanda could have easily shifted her own bowling ball to the right or left to have a similar run of success, she deliberately has missed here and there, even catapulting the ball into the gutter during one occasion. It’s harder for Vision, he realizes, his mind constantly whirring with probability and curvature and angles and equations, but Wanda’s shake of her head does the trick. With a sigh, he steps up onto the lane, and deliberately miscalculates, hurtling the ball off two degrees too much to the right, and the impending result is that it only strikes four pins. He can hear the disappointment from Fred and Linda behind him, as he plucks another ball from the retriever and throws this one even more poorly, striking only two pins, before returning to the table where his wife and the others sit.

“Tough break, Vision. You were on such a roll,” Fred says, to the laughter in the background. Vision sits down next to his wife, who immediately gives his leg a gentle squeeze under the table whispering into his ear, “Thank you.” He smiles at her, before taking his own plastic cup full of beer, noticing it’s slightly emptier than before, and he realizes his wife must have snuck sips of it here and there to make it seem like he had been drinking it. He smiles once more, then feigns a sip, just as Fred steps up to the lane. He runs a hand over his fact, as Wanda keeps score on a piece of paper with a stubby pencil.

“I did not factor into my estimations how difficult it is to actually miss,” he murmurs to his wife, as Fred sinks his own ball into the gutter, cursing under his breath as he does so. 

“Nice try, Fred!” Wanda shouts to him, before turning back to her husband, arching a brow in his direction. 

“Simple mathematics, sweetheart,” she flirts, and he can’t help but smile at her once more. “Fudge a few numbers and figures and presto! I admit, if you had gone for the strike again I would have...helped the ball in a new direction,” she says, and it is his turn to raise his eyebrows at her.

“You would cheat to have me lose?” he asks, and she bites her lip a little, before taking her own cup in hand.

“Not lose, silly,” she says, gesturing to Fred, who only hits three pins this time, shaking his head and heading back to his wife. “It’s not like you’ve got tough competition. But if I let you keep going on like you were, you may have inadvertently become the WestView bowling champion of the season,” she remarks, staring down at the scorecard once more. “You still might be.”

Vision chuckles, as they both hear, “Wanda, you’re up!” from Fred's wife Linda. She nods her head in determination, handing Vision the scorecard, as she walks up to the ball retriever, and he can’t help but admire how.. stunning...she looks in pants rather than a skirt. It feels more familiar somehow, although he can’t imagine why. Despite this, he inwardly smirks to himself, images of the night before when she was gasping his name, her hands threaded in the bedsheets scrambling for purchase as his mouth was worked its way up the side of her neck, suddenly sending his calculations to another screeching halt, as Wanda manages a spare, before walking triumphantly back to the table.

“I may lose, with how well you are playing, darling,” he says, glancing down to the scorecard again. She only smirks at him, taking his cup from him and sipping his beer again. 

“Well, I never said I didn’t like a little competition,” she challenges him, and he only murmurs an “Mmmm” at her, before softly leaning in to whisper “You’re on” before kissing a sensitive spot behind her ear. She shivers slightly, leaning closer toward him, before they both notice Fred is clearing his throat awkwardly.

“Jeez, lovebirds. Give it a rest. Vision, it’s your turn,” he says, and Vision sighs, standing up once more, this time intently miscalculating the curvature and speed at which he throws the ball, aiming at slightly less than a perfect 300 point score.