Well, it’s the end of the work, and for most folks who observe Christmas the holidays will probably kick into high gear this weekend. Since the bulk of my decorating is now done, I thought I would celebrate with a teaser from Intersection. Some background: after finding out that her first love Ben Drake was still alive and being held at a Gold Rush-themed adventure park, Evie Contreras rescues him with the help of a mysterious organization that has been manipulating her academic and work career. Now held by them,  she learns that cyborgs exist and Ben has been turned into one during his time at the park. She steals a security badge from one of the base officers to break into medbay and get the truth from Ben. Enjoy!

This time, the medbay doors opened obediently at her approach. Evie had been afraid that the base AI might stop her. Apparently her stolen RFID clip was enough to lull the AI into a sense of complacency.

Not after this, though. If Ballardie didn’t tell Lilith to check facial recognition against RFID codes from that point on, Evie would eat her tablet. She had one chance to see Ben, and she wasn’t about to waste it.

Pretend like you belong. That was easy enough; straight spine, a slightly bored but alert expression. She grabbed a pile of sheets from a pile on a small cart and carried them as a prop. The hallway ended at a round station manned by a very handsome, very bored man in red scrubs. His curly black hair had been cut short, and he needed a shave judging by the heavy five o’clock shadow, but his celadon eyes lit up when he saw her.

“Hel-lo,” he said in a drawled accent. “Did someone finally hear my plea for more help?”

“That’s what I was told,” Evie said brightly. “I’m Ally. Where do you need me?”

“Oh, my.” The man gave her a slow up and down that was lascivious and amusing at the same time. “Don’t ask me questions like that, love. I’m still on call for two more hours.”

She snorted, glancing at the ancient whiteboard propped up on the station’s counter. It had to be a list of patient rooms. “I bet you say that to all the new volunteers.”

“Only the ones who’ve stolen my heart.” He plunked his hand over his breastbone. “Promise me I’ll see you later, Ally. It may be the only thing that gets me through this deathly dull shift.”

She allowed herself a brief, amused grin. This one was a charmer, which made things easier and harder at the same time. Easier because he’d let her slide past. Harder because he’d definitely check out her ass as she walked away. “No promises…”

“Samir. Dr. Samir Haddad.” Something on his console beeped and he grimaced. “Oh, damn. Duty calls, love. I’ll catch you later?”

“You can try.” She turned and walked around the station, resisting the urge to hurry.

The station sat at the crosspoint of four corridors like a bull’s eye. Luck and left-to-right reading habits were with her and B corridor was opposite the one from the entrance. She headed down there, counting rooms until she came to B4.
The board had Drake, B printed neatly next to the B4 slot. Licking dry lips, she grabbed the door handle. The worst they would do was kick her out, maybe yell at her for boosting Rob’s RFID wand. She’d take that and much worse to be able to talk to Ben, her Ben, not some tarted up artificial persona that someone had programmed onto a chip.

She opened the door, ready to smile.

And stopped.

Her first thought was that she’d gotten the rooms mixed up somehow. Because the thing on the bed, it looked like Ben, yes, but it was missing both arms and everything from the middle of its chest on down. The holes in the body had been sealed neatly with glistening gelatinous caps, and a variety of tubes and wires ran from them to a mix of equipment arranged around the bed. Some of the tech she recognized from her own work, equipment regularly used in cybertech. The rest looked more like it belonged in a hospital room, with a person.

Not here. Not with this … mockery.

He really was an android, something in the back of her mind whispered. They lied to you, they all lied to you—

The Ben-thing opened its eyes. And looked at her with the most hesitant, heartbreaking smile. “Evie?”

She shook her head. Why was it lying to her? Why did it have to use Ben’s voice?

It glanced down, craning its neck. Blue eyes went wide, filling with horror. “No. Oh, God, no!”

She choked back a sob, shaking her head.

He looked up. Color flooded his face, making his eyes seem to glow as he stared at her. And then the horror disappeared, replaced by incandescent fury. “Get out!” he shouted, raising his head off the bed far enough to jostle some of the wires and tubes. Somewhere an alarm began to bleep. “Goddamn you, Evie, get out! Don’t look at me!”

She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to see any of this. Screwing her eyes shut, she fumbled for the door handle behind her.

“Get out!”

There it was. She stepped backwards, away from the impossibility on the bed. Away from the last, final hope she’d allowed herself to have.

She backed into someone. Turning, she looked up into Samir’s now-grim face.

He grabbed her arm, his grip not ungentle but impossible to escape. “I think we need to have a chat,” he drawled. “Don’t you agree, Ally?”

After a doctor’s visit that confirmed I do have a sinus infection (yay colds that lead to bacterial gunk!), I now have antibiotics and a steroid shot to open up everything in my nasal passages, which means I’m feeling way better than I have since Thursday, woo. To celebrate, here’s a snippet from my new SF erotic romance, Intersection (Pacifica Rising 1).

Some background: in 2048, global warming and civil unrest have devastated civilization and rewritten the political map of Earth. Corporate-owned Protectorates now act as nation-states, and the Pacifica Protectorate is one of the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful regions on the planet, stretching from the former location of Seattle down to just north of San Jose. Pacifica is run by a technocracy, and its inhabitants are either Board Members, Shareholders or Employees. Those who lose their jobs are either forced to leave the Protectorate for the Outlands or can volunteer for reclamation work in the Northern Territory, which was badly damaged by the Great Shake of 2023. Just turned 19, Evie Contreras is a brilliant young woman about to head off to technical college. Ben Drake is 31 and the Pacifica Protectorate Defense Forces captain who was the best friend of her older (and now-deceased) brother Christo. A widower, Ben has hired Evie to babysit for his 6-year-old daughter Ally when he has to go on patrol. But Evie’s feelings for Ben are anything but professional…

“I’ll have Ally packed up and ready to go tomorrow.”

Evie nodded. She already had the other bed in her room made up with clean sheets and a blanket. Ally had stayed over often enough that everyone knew the drill. “Do you know how long you’ll be gone?”

Ben gestured vaguely. “It’s supposed to be two weeks, but you know that can change. Will that be all right with your folks?”

She had to grin at that. “Mama’s already cooking up everything Ally likes. She loves having her stay with us. And as far as Papa’s concerned, the more kids in the house, the better.”

Something in his expression flickered at that and she bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t put it that way. Papa would be over the moon if she made him an abuelo, and Mama would be even more thrilled. But they would expect her to get married first like a good girl before she started presenting them with grandchildren. And in her heart of hearts she couldn’t imagine someone like Ben marrying a 19-year-old wannabe tech whose parents worked as personal servants.

“Anyway, we’re all set to have her, don’t worry about that,” she said quickly. “You just take care of yourself.”

“Roger that.” He grinned at her, his smile bright even in the dimness of the car interior. “Thanks for everything you do, Evie. I don’t think I tell you enough how much I appreciate you.”

Her heart glowed at the praise. “You’re welcome,” she said, trying to make it sound casual. “I—I mean, we—appreciate what you’re doing for all of us, being in the Defense Forces.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, looking away. Neither of them said her brother Christo’s name, but he was there anyway. “Anyway, I better get going.”

“Right.” She reached out for the door handle, then paused. Serving in the Defense Forces was a dangerous job. Christo was proof of that. And while Ben was an experienced soldier, there was never a guarantee that he’d come back from a deployment. She was of legal age and had her contraceptive implant. And the worst, the absolute worst he would do was push her away. It would break her heart, true, but it would break her heart even worse if he never came back and didn’t know how she felt—

She leaned back and kissed him. His lips were warm and firm against her own, and this close she could smell him, the light scent of body wash and something underneath that smelled like fresh-cut wood, salt, and something her mind simply labeled “Ben.”

She pulled back, just enough to see his eyes. The light blue had almost completely disappeared, pushed into a thin ring around a dark center.

And then he was kissing her. His arms slid around her, pulling her in tight as his mouth came down on hers, eager and hungry. It was nothing like kissing guys her own age. It was much, much, much better.

Wiser (and cooler) heads have already spilled lakes of electronic ink on the subject of the US presidential election, so I won’t continue the discussion here other than to say that my candidate did not win, and I am concerned with the direction I see the country taking over the next four years. But I’m also taking the advice I have recently received to heart, and am getting involved politically with local groups to make sure that public servants who align more with my interests are elected in local and state elections, and to the House and Senate in 2018.So I have that going for me.

On a separate but related note, an individual on Twitter gloated to me that “at least the SJWs are gone and that’s all that matters to me.” To which I reply, “Buckle up, buttercup. This is just act one.”

If you’re still with me after all that, I thank you. Progress continues on Intersection, and I should have a first draft done by November 30, which means that I may have it ready for purchase before Christmas. Not that it’s a holiday story, but it means you’ll have a big shiny new SF erotic romance new series to sink your teeth into while trying to ignore the shouting over the Thanksgiving dinner table. And it even has cyborgs, because everyone likes cyborgs!

Anyway, no rest for the wicked — back to work!