Act Fourteen - Interlude: Girl Talk

    “Tell him what?”

    “Even I can tell, Dorothy.” Hope continues to paint, her brush moving in intricate strokes on the canvas. She glances at the wall off to the corner that I cannot see for a second, and then back to her canvas. “You’re no ordinary android. And you love him, don’t you?”

    I do not respond, for a long moment I simply hold my pose.

    And then, when it seems that Hope will not speak again until I do, I open my mouth, “It doesn’t matter what I think I might feel, Roger will never see me as anything more than a machine.”

    “You’re wrong.”

    If it were possible for me to be startled, I think I might be by that.

    “The Negotiator thought of you as only a machine, until he didn’t.”

    “You make little sense, Miss Hope.”

    “I’m making perfect sense. At least as much sense, Dorothy, as I was designed to.”

    “Designed?”

    “There are some things I’m going to tell you about myself that I’m entrusting you with. You cannot tell the Negotiator, but in order to protect him, you will need to know them.” She pauses, and sets the pallet down on the table, and the brush on the tray of her easel. “Can you accept that? Or should I not tell you what he can’t know?”

    I start to speak, and she interrupts.

    “If you were just a normal android, you would be incapable of lying to him, or any human.”

    “I accept.”

    “I knew you were special.”

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