Chapter 40: Moving On
Our medical observation ended the next day, and we were told we were free to go. I saw some of the jiaoren who’d been caught up in falling debris and I suddenly felt like you and I’d gotten off relatively unscathed, at least physically.
Mentally, I wasn’t so sure.
"What’s eating you?"
I looked up then away from you. Your glasses were one of the casualties of our underwater adventure and without them your gaze seemed even sharper. "Nothing," I said. We were walking down the main street of the Under City having just said our goodbyes to Tuesday and her other jiaoren co-workers.
She explained that since jiaoren are born into a world where they can move both up and down as well as around, that they’re better suited to computer work than land-based humans and their lateral thinking.
"Are you hungry?" you asked.
I had to smile at that. "I’m not a dog," I said with feigned annoyance.
Yesterday had been chaos in the Under City as everyone tried to find out what had happened and what the extent of the damage was. Today, most that information had already been circulated so, at least above water, everything had quietened down. Under water, I wasn’t so sure, but Tuesday mentioned that only the lowest six floors of the SSD had been damaged and of those, only three had actually disintegrated.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Me? I’m fine," you replied.
"Really?"