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"...car tout est déjà mort et ressuscité d’avance."
—Ecclesiastes
The building in which Roger lived was very large. It had many rooms he rarely entered.
Sometimes, he got lost.
On this evening, he had been looking for the kitchens, but he took the wrong stairs or turned down the wrong hallway, and instead he had found a dark room, enormous and empty and faintly lemon-scented.
Standing in the dimly lit hallway, he peered into the unfamiliar room. A flicker of something arose in his mind—a long low table, bright electric lights overhead, overturned chairs and the heavy smell of smoke coming through the building's vents, and a woman laughing horribly behind him—
"Roger."
The vision vanished. He turned to find R. Dorothy Waynewright standing behind him. She was a gleaming ghost in the low light.
"Dorothy," he said, automatically reaching up to brush back his immaculate hair, "I've been trying to reach Norm–"
"Roger, you stood there for two and a half minutes without moving," Dorothy said, her voice cool and unhurried. "And maybe you were standing there even longer before I saw you. Why?"
"Maybe I was just thinking," Roger said defensively. "I'm allowed to think sometimes, you know. And perhaps I wanted to see–"
"There is nothing in that room. I clean it thoroughly every two weeks. Why did you come down here to see it?"
"What? I didn't want to see it," Roger said with irritation. "I came down here because I was looking for the kitchens. I've been trying to reach Norman on the communicator, but he isn't responding."
"No, he would not," Dorothy agreed. "We are listening to The Adventures of Johnny Valor, The Fearless Submariner."
"What?"
"Come, Roger Smith," Dorothy said, turning. "I will take you to the kitchens. I will keep you from getting lost again."
"I wasn't lost," Roger grumbled as he hastened after her. "Really, I shouldn't even be down here in the first place. Isn't it the job of my employees to come up to see me? Isn't it the job of my employees to make sure I don't need to hunt for them in the first place?"
"Is it our job?" Dorothy's voice was icily amused. "I do not believe I receive a paycheck. Nor does Norman."
Roger blinked. "Room and board, Dorothy. And all the oil your gears can handle!"
"Ha," Dorothy said. "Ha."
Roger brushed at his hair again. "Anyway. Why do you clean it?"
"What was that?"
"Why do you clean an empty room every two weeks? What is there to clean?"
"Have you ever thought," Dorothy said, her pale legs pacing ahead of him in the low light, "that a house is like a living thing? And that every part of it deserves to be treated with care and love, even its forgotten and hidden corners?"
Roger considered these statements. "No, Dorothy. I've never thought that."
"Perhaps it is not surprising that humans would create buildings that resemble themselves, given their self-absorption," Dorothy said musingly. "A house has its outer limbs and an inner core. Corridors like veins and arteries. It even has places of production and warmth, like the chambers of a heart."
"Oh, does it? Where is the heart of this building, then?"
"The kitchens, obviously," she said in a bored tone. "Try to keep up. It is a worn and scratched heart, to be sure, but it is a heart all the same, even as you do your best to remain a stranger to it." She sniffed. "Yes, I clean that empty room back there regularly. To maintain a building, you must maintain all the little parts, even the unimportant crevices."
"Fine, fine. Though it does seem like a lot of wasted effort."
"Roger, if you were left to your own devices, you would barely maintain yourself."
"Hey, come on!"
"There's a reason that you leave all the cooking to Norman and all the cleaning to me. On your own, you'd stay in bed until noon and eat nothing but dry toast."
Roger burst out laughing. "Dorothy! I took care of myself long before I met you or Norman, I promise you. I can make my way through life perfectly fine. I just...value certain things differently than you or Norman do when it comes to household management."
"Hmm. How strange that you cannot find the kitchens on your own, Roger Smith. What does that say about what you value in this building?" She paused before a nondescript door. "Here we are. Pay attention, Roger Smith. I may not be here to guide you next time."
In contrast to the somber shades that made up most of the rooms in Roger's home, the kitchens were bright and warm and just a little bit scuffed at the corners, in all the places where onions were chopped and pots were scoured.
And as Roger stepped across the threshold of the open door, for a moment he was standing in the same kitchen, but everything about it was suddenly different, all the newest appliances installed, the envy of their neighbors, and his wife was handing him a martini glass and saying, 'You work too hard, darling,' her red hair long and lustrous, and there was a sharp pain in his throat, and there was broken glass on the tiled floor, and–
Roger inhaled sharply and brought his hand to his throat, but the vision had dissolved, and he was once again standing in a kitchen that he expected, as Dorothy impatiently held the door open for him.
"Norman, here you go. I found Roger."
"Ah, Master Roger? What brings you down here?" Norman was wearing an apron and stirring something in a saucepan over the stove.
There was also a voice in the kitchen, emanating from some unseen mouth, speaking words in an oddly clipped cadence. "...and that's when I knew the dastardly Jester had sabotaged my torpedoes..."
"I was trying to reach you on the communicator, Norman," Roger said, frowning as he stepped into the voice-blanketed kitchen. "You didn't answer, so I came looking."
"Oh dear. My profound apologies, Master Roger. I must have missed it. This evening, we've been quite absorbed in The Adventures of Johnny Valor, The Fearless Submariner."
Roger leaned against the edge of a well-scrubbed counter. "What?"
"Johnny Valor, Master Roger," Norman said.
"The Fearless Submariner," Dorothy added as she neatly seated herself upon a kitchen stool.
"That doesn't clarify anything," Roger said.
Ignoring this, Dorothy asked, "What did I miss, Norman?"
"Oh, nothing much, Miss Dorothy. Johnny Valor is still trapped in the underseas ruins and trying to find an escape route before the Jester's henchmen find the hidden treasure. He is currently being hunted by a feral pack of electric eels."
The voice echoing through the kitchens was saying, "Lund Nylons bring you The Adventures of Johnny Valor, The Fearless Submariner. Lund Nylons do not run, and neither does Johnny Valor from the dangerous sea-criminals of Nova Schema!"
Norman continued to whisk vigorously. "Why were you looking for me, Master Roger?"
"I need to go out," Roger said. "I've realized something about the Perkins negotiation, and I wanted to go see something. But first I wanted to know if the car was ready to be taken out."
"Oh, yes, Master Roger. I replaced the brake light in the Griffon this afternoon, after you returned. But go out now? Dinner will be ready in an hour."
"You can reheat it when I get back," Roger said absently. "I also need to borrow Dorothy."
Norman sighed. "But, sir, my roux–"
Dorothy remained unmoving on her stool. "I cannot be borrowed at the moment, Roger Smith. Johnny Valor is on."
The deep voice on the radio was saying, "You nearly got away with it, but one little thing gave you away, Jester. You and your eels."
"You don't want to come because you want to listen to the radio?"
"I want to listen to Johnny Valor," Dorothy said. "Norman and I listen to it every time it airs. Four times a week. Usually at seven o'clock. But...not today, because it is a special holiday program. So it is an hour earlier."
Roger shot Norman an incredulous look, and Norman shrugged.
"It's a very good serial, sir. Some top-notch writing. You'd be surprised."
"The forces of evil shall always topple when faced with the civic spirit of Nova Schema!" said the radio.
"Some of the time," Norman amended. "Some of the time, sir, there is some surprisingly good writing."
"The quality of the writing is not important," Roger said. "Dorothy, this is not a req–" He paused for a moment as Dorothy calmly turned to face him. "I mean. Dorothy. This is important. I think we've missed something important about the Perkins negotiation. Something that changes everything. We need to go back to that old apartment building where we found that family album stashed away."
Dorothy said nothing.
"My apologies, Master Roger. But this installment of Johnny Valor is a special holiday program."
"Meaning?"
"We will be discovering the secret of the hidden treasure," Dorothy said.
"And Winston, Johnny Valor's trusty companion, will be returning after being separated from Johnny Valor for several episodes," Norman said.
"And Johnny Valor may even find the Princess of Atlantis after searching for her for the entire duration of the series."
Roger stared at them.
Dorothy did not sigh, but only because she was incapable of exhalation. "Very well, Roger. I will come. But please note that I am making a sacrifice on your behalf. I will regret missing this radio program."
Roger did sigh. "You won't have to miss anything, Dorothy. My car does have a radio of its very own, you know."
She regarded him with unblinking eyes. "You never play the radio in your car, Roger Smith."
"I always play the radio. It's just that we're usually listening to Norman's dedicated channel or the military police. But today, I will offer you a special treat. In honor of your...sacrifice. Now, come along. Norman, don't worry about dinner for me tonight."
A very faint sigh rolled across the bubbling roux in the saucepan. "Very good, sir."
"You dastardly villain! I can't believe you sent those orphans out to sell matchsticks during this typhoon!" said the radio.
"I am belatedly realizing what a sacrifice I am making by enduring this auditory adventure," Roger said.
"Shhh," Dorothy said. She was curled up in the passenger seat and dreamily gazing at the passing buildings. "Just listen. Don't talk."
"Come on, Winston. We've got to get to the center of the ancient city before the Jester does!"
"I still haven't been able to figure out whether this Winston character is an android or a dog."
"He's both, of course," Dorothy said as a metallic barking filled the car.
"Of course," Roger said. "Tell me, Dorothy, do you actually consider this radio serial to be...good?"
"What's that, Winston? Little Timmy is trapped in the old oxygen chute? We've got to get to him on the way."
"No, of course not," Dorothy said in her flat, low voice. "It is an endless display of cliché, inconsistent characterization, and implausible plot twists. Johnny Valor is a character with no depth or interiority aside from his tremendous wealth and various gadgets, and the antagonist, the Jester, has no discernible motivations for his many acts of criminal madness."
Roger blinked. "Oh. Then, why–"
"Norman likes it," Dorothy said. "And I like listening with him, and discussing it with him afterwards, and speculating on what will happen next. It pleases Norman, and that pleases me."
Roger smiled. "Why, Dorothy, I had no idea you were so invested in Norman's happiness."
There was a pause, and then Dorothy said in a voice even flatter and lower than usual, "I have other reasons. I listen to this radio program because it seems like the kind of thing that...that the earlier Dorothy would have followed."
"Ah," Roger said diplomatically.
Another long pause, and even though Roger had asked no follow-up questions, Dorothy's voice had the edge of someone making a forced and unwilling confession. "I was designed to be like her in every way. My grandfather built me to know what she liked and disliked. I have had much time to consider her preferences and aversions."
"I see," Roger said. "So the...earlier Dorothy liked Johnny Valor, did she?"
"This radio program did not exist in her lifetime," Dorothy said. "It is impossible to determine definitively if she would have liked it or not. But from my reconstruction of her personality, I believe she would have liked it."
"And yet," Roger said, turning the wheel as the car pulled into a long alleyway, "you do not like the program, even though you are designed to be a perfect recreation of the girl who should have liked it."
"Yes."
"That seems like a paradox to me, Dorothy."
"No," Dorothy said. "It is perfectly logical. I contain everything that made up my predecessor. But I extend further. She stopped having new experiences at the moment of her death, but I continue onward. She is like...like an exhibit in the museum of my mind. I walk around her, as it were. I study her, but she cannot study me. I have new thoughts, but she does not. She may make up the core basis of my personality matrix, but we are not identical. I bend; she is rigid."
"Ah," Roger said. "But are you allowed to disagree with your earlier self? Are you allowed to change and diverge away from the original Dorothy? That seems like the sort of thing your creator would have wanted to prevent."
"Allowed? I am allowed to do anything, Roger Smith. My grandfather did not intend for me to live in a straitjacket or a cage."
Roger opened his mouth to respond, and then a cluster of mental images suddenly registered, like a handful of raspberries bursting brightly in his mouth—a red dress, a club called The Nightingale, a golden voice singing a song that had been dead for forty years, an old man as unyielding and unchanging as iron, a gunshot—and he closed his mouth again without speaking.
Dorothy regarded him narrowly.
"Quick, Winston! We've got to get to that bathysphere before the Jester's eels do!"
"Woof. Woof."
"What's the deal with these underwater adventures, anyway? How does this Johnny Valor character survive down there?"
"He has a submarine," Dorothy said in a faintly pitying tone. "It's in the title of the show, Roger."
"I am aware, but I have not heard any reference to this alleged submarine the entire time I've been forced to listen to this. Johnny Valor seems to spend a lot of time swimming from place to place several leagues underwater. But how?"
"He knows how to hold his breath," Dorothy said. "He practiced."
Roger laughed, but then it became clear that Dorothy was not joking. "What?"
"He practiced," Dorothy said again. "For years. Ever since he was a boy. So, as a result of constant and diligent practice, his lung capacity is larger than the ordinary human's lung capacity. He can hold his breath for an hour."
"That's absurd."
"It is part of his character backstory," Dorothy said, shrugging. "He has practiced holding his breath until he barely needs to breathe."
"You might as well say that he practiced dying until he was immortal."
"No, that's the Jester's backstory," Dorothy said. "He drowned and came back to life in a freak electric-eel accident, and now he can no longer drown."
Roger snorted. "And Norman thinks this show is well-written?"
"Norman would say that it's all symbolic," Dorothy said, resting her head against the glass window of the car once again. "Norman would say that the expression is simple, but that the patterns are deep."
"Norman would say that?"
"Why are we going back to that apartment building?" Dorothy asked suddenly.
Roger tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel. "We missed something. We missed something we were supposed to miss. But I...had a thought."
Dorothy glanced at him. "What thought?"
"Just a thought."
There was a traffic light showing red up ahead, and as Roger pressed down on the brakes and came to a stop, for a second it was as if he was sitting in a different car, and there were sirens blaring behind him, and his passenger seat was empty, but he knew without looking in the rearview mirror that there was a woman lying across the backseat, and she was dying, and nothing mattered anymore, not traffic lights, not sirens, not–
"Roger," said Dorothy seated beside him, alive in the spirit of the law, if not the letter. "The light is green."
"Right," he said, hitting the gas pedal. "Right, of course."
The Perkins negotiation had been deceptively simple at the start. All Roger needed to do was determine that no heirs existed for the long-abandoned Perkins estate, and then Paradigm Corporation could come in and claim all of the family's various holdings.
The easiest course of action was to simply declare Nope, no heirs and let Paradigm do what they wanted. It was obviously the course of action that Paradigm had hoped he would follow.
But Roger never wanted to give Paradigm anything that they wanted, and so he perversely sought a Perkins heir. He had pulled on loose threads and poked at weak points and kicked over various rocks and generally made a nuisance of himself throughout the whole city. As a result, he had undercovered a series of strange and labyrinthine conspiracies, secret societies and forged identities, wheels within wheels, plots within plots, and lies upon lies.
Still no Perkins heir, though. He had solved half a dozen other mysteries while working on this negotiation, but he was no closer to settling his actual objective.
The car came to a stop beside a crumbling curb.
"I regret to inform you, Dorothy, that we're going to have to get out of the car and miss whatever is going on with Johnny Valor."
"That is fine," she said. "At this point in the program, they're just going to read advertisements for Lund Nylons for a while. We won't miss anything important."
"What a relief."
The old apartment building had once possessed a facade of ostentatious grandeur. There were still elegant marble columns that marched beneath the sign that read W. W. PERKINS BUILDING. But the building's roof had long since fallen in, and the interior was full of shattered concrete and fallen steel beams.
"Dorothy? A little light, if you please?"
The arc of Dorothy's headband flared to life. "Roger. Please tell me that you did not require my presence in order to have a walking flashlight at hand."
"Of course not," Roger murmured as he ducked through the gaping hole that had once been the front entrance.
Dorothy, with a noise that was very similar to an electronic snort, followed him.
Inside, there was debris everywhere, but it was still possible to move around the piles of rubble. Furniture was scattered about, though the looters had long since taken everything of value. Above them loomed half-fallen walls that clearly had some further falling to do.
"So was this place ever like a living thing, Dorothy? Did this place ever have a heart?"
He expected Dorothy to say something like, Yes, Roger, it once held people who loved and laughed, of course it had a heart but instead she simply said, "No, Roger."
"What?"
"This place has never had a heart. It was made dead."
He paused. "What do you mean?"
She did not answer him. Instead, she said, "This is where we found the photo album, yes? The one that led you to the orphanage, and then the underground circus, and then the alderman's secret gambling den?"
"Mmm," Roger said. "You recall how we found it, right? Tucked in a desk drawer in that old little office on the first floor? Even though it was a strange place to keep a thing like that."
"Yes," Dorothy said. "I recall."
Roger came to a stop. "It was this old little office, in fact. Look at the dust on the floor. Those are our footprints. Nobody has been here since our visit."
"I see."
"But take a look at this back wall, Dorothy. Right behind this old desk. Do you notice anything strange?"
Dorothy inspected the wall solemnly. "It has different colored sections. It has been painted with white paint, but they only used one coat."
"Yes," Roger said. "They built and plastered the wall in haste. It's newer than the rest of the building, using material from the collapse. I saw it when we came here last week, but the significance didn't occur to me until today." He turned to face her, and his teeth gleamed in the glare of her light. "Now, this is the reason I brought you, Dorothy."
She rolled her eyes. "Very well. Stand back." She brought up her arm, and Roger barely had time to get out of the way before her fist was slamming forward to punch the wall, which crumbled with a sharp crack.
Dorothy moved her head, and her unsparing light moved across the space that had been hidden behind the makeshift wall.
"Ah," Roger said, brushing away the dust that had blown onto his shoulder.
It was like staring into a mirror: the room behind the wall was a mirror for the room that had been before the wall. There was the same dented filing cabinet, the same ancient calendar slumped to the floor, the same slanted folding chair, and the same wooden desk.
Roger bent to open the second desk's drawer. Inside was a binder with letters on its cover that glittered under Dorothy's light: FAMILY ALBUM.
"It's the same," Dorothy said. "It's the same as the photo album we found before."
"Almost," Roger said as he began to leaf through the album. "The photos in here are the same. But the name on the inside cover is different. Before, it said 'Perkins.' On this one, it says, 'Weston.'"
Dorothy's voice was flat and emotionless. "What does it mean, Roger?"
There was a long pause. Around them, the crumbling rooms of the old apartment building waited, unmoving and silent. There was nothing here that breathed, aside from Roger himself, and yet there was the feeling of something holding its breath, a sense of expectant pressure, a balloon inflated to the brink of bursting.
Without looking back at her, Roger said, "It must be the work of the Paradigm Corporation. God knows what their game is, though. They must have set up this little scene with props or something. Maybe they seeded this place with a couple of different scenarios, and depending on how my investigation was going, they planned to break one of these cells open and let me 'discover' some planted evidence."
The world released its breath. The balloon did not burst.
Dorothy gazed down at the back of Roger's bent head. His voice was calm, flippant even, but she could see the line of his jaw, and she could see it clenched and hard.
She laid one hand, gently, on his shoulder. "So what now?"
"I can only assume that we've been sent on a wild goose chase," Roger said. "The Paradigm Corporation must have realized we were getting closer to the real heir. So they devised this entire...set as a means to divert our attentions." He glanced above, at the ruins of the apartment building all around them. "This whole thing is probably honey-combed with red herrings. It's probably all fake."
"Probably," Dorothy agreed.
"But that just means that they're trying to hide something. Which means that there's something to find." Roger's voice had been quiet and listless, but now it took on a determined quality. He straightened. "We'll have to start from the beginning. A fresh start. Without any of these fabricated leads. We'll do it right this time."
"Yes, Roger."
"Let's go home, Dorothy. Tomorrow is the real beginning of this negotiation. We will find that Perkins heir."
"Yes, Roger."
On their way back to the car, Dorothy started speaking.
"You said a thought brought you back here, Roger. What did you mean?"
Roger was silent for a long moment, and when he finally spoke, his voice was slightly strained. "I saw this apartment building. Back when it was still open and everything. The sign over the building did not say PERKINS. It said BLOOM. So I knew the building had been changed. And if the signs had been altered, why not other parts of the building as well? Why not that photo album that we oh-so-conveniently found? Ergo. Everything else followed."
"You saw this? Like a memory?"
"No. Not a memory."
"What do you mean? Sometimes other people's memories just...bubble up, unexpectedly."
"I know. But this wasn't that," Roger said quietly. "Because I was there. And you were too. So it wasn't something that happened to someone else before the Event. It wasn't something that happened at all. So it must have been a dream, a waking dream."
Dorothy raised an eyebrow. "What were we doing...together in this dream of yours, Roger?"
"I was dying," Roger said lightly, "because you had just shot me on the sidewalk outside the Bloom apartment building, and as I bled from my abdominal wound, I had time to stare at the sign overhead."
Silence.
"Now, you mustn't feel guilty for what your dream-self did, Dorothy—"
"No, of course not," Dorothy said tartly. "If I shot you, then you must have done something to deserve it, Roger. I will absolve this other dream-self with ease. But I am curious. You said it was a waking dream?"
"Yes."
"Do you often have waking dreams?"
A pause. "No, not often. But recently, they have been...common."
"What kinds of things happen in these dreams of yours, Roger?"
Roger said, "Oh, this and that. A random assortment of things, generally quite meaningless. Probably just the residue of my subconscious."
Roger did not say: I'm there and you're there but we're always playing different parts, and sometimes we're lovers, and sometimes we're enemies, and sometimes we're complete strangers, and one of us is always dying, and it's always the worst thing in the world, the unendurable rupture, the end of the everything, the–
For a little while, they walked in silence, and Dorothy's light cut a path through the gloom ahead of them.
"You know that I contain memories," Dorothy said at last.
"I know that," Roger said.
"I do not know what those memories contain," Dorothy said. "I cannot access them. I am insufficient to activate them. For a long time, I resented that. I resented that my grandfather had made me to be a vessel for more important things."
"Dorothy..."
"But I have changed my mind," she continued. "I do not think that was my grandfather's intention at all. I have come to think that he wanted me to...grow. Not in some pathetic self-help way, you understand. But literally. He wanted me to expand past the parameters of the first Dorothy. Past the parameters of my program. He wanted me to become larger and larger, until I was vast enough to comprehend whatever is sealed in those memories inside me."
They were climbing out of the ruined department store. Roger's car was in sight.
Whatever Roger had been expecting Dorothy to say next, it was not: "It's like Johnny Valor."
Roger nearly stumbled over a piece of fallen marble column. "It's like what?"
"It's like Johnny Valor practicing how to hold his breath. His lungs getting bigger and bigger. Capable of holding more and more oxygen." Dorothy gave a decisive nod. "It's the same with me. It's just practicing...everything. Becoming enormous and complicated enough to comprehend whatever strange things are buried in those memories."
Roger, reaching for his keys, paused to glance at her. "But you'll be different then. You won't still be the Dorothy you are now."
"Yes," she said serenely. "But I will still contain the Dorothy that I am now. I will just contain more than that. And so perhaps it is the same with you, Roger. Perhaps you are having these dreams all of a sudden because your brain has advanced sufficiently to encompass them. Or perhaps you are having these dreams because your subconscious wants to practice certain scenarios, in preparation for consciously enacting them."
Roger could not prevent a full-body shudder at her words. "In this particular case, I hope that's not the case. C'mon, let's get home. I'll even let you listen to the rest of your undersea detective program on the way back."
The car radio refused to pick up the channel broadcasting Johnny Valor, The Fearless Submariner.
"That's strange," Roger said, turning the dial back and forth. "Maybe something is interfering with the broadcast all of a sudden?"
"It's fine," Dorothy said faintly. "Norman can tell me what I didn't hear."
Roger glanced down at her. "And miss Johnny Valor's triumph over the Clown?"
"The Jester," Dorothy corrected.
"Nonsense," Roger said. "Lucky for you, Dorothy, I have another radio device at hand." He began fiddling with his wrist communicator. "It does not normally pick up outside radio broadcasts, but there's no reason...ah, there we go."
A very faint noise emerged from Roger's wrist communicator: "Quick, Winston, aim for the seaweed!"
"It's not very loud," Dorothy said.
"Yeah, that's as loud as I can get it," Roger said. "You'll have to lean close...oh."
Dorothy was pressing her ear against Roger's wrist, her head and Roger's arm close together in the space between their seats. The surface of her body was neither hot nor cold, but it was perfectly smooth, and Roger felt the hairs on the back of his hand prickle at the close contact.
Her hair fell softly around his palm and fingers.
"What are you waiting for? You need only one hand to drive, Roger Smith."
"Right," Roger said, exhaling as he grasped the steering wheel with his free hand. "Thank you for the reminder, Dorothy."
And as he started the car's engine, he wondered if this strange and inexplicable moment—the fabricated investigation, the android with her head pressed against his pulse, the tinny sounds emitting from his communicator about a fictitious mariner—would make sense to him later. Or would it arise in someone else's memory one day, someone vast enough to comprehend it, someone who had practiced long enough to bear it?
He was not exactly sure what compelled him to open his mouth and say: "Dorothy, do you ever wish that things had turned out differently? With...everything?"
There was a silence that lasted so long that Roger began to think Dorothy had not heard his question, and then she said, "No. There is no point in wishing for that. After all, no matter what, things will be different for us soon enough. Only the dead live without change." She shifted the position of her head so that she could look up at Roger without removing her ear from his wrist. "And besides. I believe my future self will look back on this iteration of consciousness with a certain degree of satisfaction."
Roger blinked. "Why is that, Dorothy?"
Dorothy did not answer his question. Instead she said, "When we get back to the house, Roger, you'll come to the kitchens with me, and you'll eat whatever Norman was making for dinner, and you'll listen to the thrilling conclusion of Johnny Valor, The Fearless Submariner with us."
"Am I going to do that, Dorothy?" He clicked his tongue. "I've never done something like that before."
"Yes," she said. "But doesn't it sound better than all the typical things you've done before? Come rest in the heart of your household for once. It will be good for you, Roger. It will strengthen you for everything that lies before us."
"Well. When you put it like that, Dorothy, how can I refuse?"