Chapter 35: Cassidy X Huma

Cassidy was so psychically exhausted by her encounter with Homer Ikari that she just lay on the floor of the Botanical Gardens for hours, struggling to muster the strength to so much as stand up. For most of her life Cassidy had no concept of empathy. She couldn't understand the inherently limiting way most people thought. Cassidy spent most of her childhood assuming that other people were simply lying when they expressed uncertainty about future events that, to Cassidy, were painfully obvious. Long before most people could even process their grief, Cassidy had already coped with any possible outcome.

But in Cassidy's blissful obliviousness, she had never considered the prospect that her own fate could have been any different. Cassidy could see now through sheer dumb luck and happenstance she had realized on her own the importance of keeping her way of thinking a strictly guarded secret, of being quiet enough that no one would think to ask her questions they didn't want to hear the answer to. Cassidy had never entertained the idea of trying to think about the world proactively. The potential consequences were horrific and unfathomable. Now Cassidy had fathomed them. Even knowing that Homer's fate could not befall her, the experience was humbling to Cassidy, creating in her a most unwelcome sense of perpetual existential dread.

By the time Cassidy had managed to force herself to stand up again her only thought was to close down the Botanical Garden and go to sleep for the rest of the day. She figured that the sign had already been turned around, either by Homer or one of the patrons who left before their encounter. However, just as Cassidy was about to stagger into the back room, she heard the sound of a most unwelcome voice, albeit not one whose presence was difficult to predict.

"I knew it!" cried Huma, running forward out of breath. "Ha! The sign said closed, but the sun's still out! And the door wasn't locked! I got questions for you!"

Cassidy turned around slowly. Huma Reid was just a typical uninteresting idiot personality-wise. It bewildered Cassidy a little bit, to think that this woman who was a God could have fallen so far from her calling as to be so useless. Huma had once been an existential threat to them all but now? She wasn't even capable of meaningful insight, having abandoned her previous power for a painfully naive belief that facts alone could move people without the use of the fine art of persuasion. The robots did this. They convinced Huma that intelligence mattered more than reason. In a way it was tragic that the once perceptive Huma couldn't even tell who Cassidy was without a direct clue from her machines.

"I really don't want to talk to you right now," said Cassidy. "I am in a very bad mood and you don't want to hear what I have to say."

"What are you going to do?" asked Huma Reid, smiling. "Threaten me? What are you scared of? That I'll show the whole world who you really are?"

"Look," scowled Cassidy. "I already had this conversation with Homer Ikari, but at least he was intelligent enough to understand the point. Ask him who I really am if you care so much about it. I don't like you Huma Reid, and I take comfort knowing that we shall never meet again."

"OK, sure," said Huma, as Cassidy turned away. "Just so long as you don't care about everyone knowing you're a liar!"

"What," said Cassidy, with gritted teeth, slowly turning back around, "have I allegedly lied about?"

"You're a scammer," said Huma. "I looked into your financial records. Lot of donations you have flowing in here. Lot of exotic plants. I don't know how the scam works exactly, not yet, but if I publish what I do, people will find out."

Cassidy was not worried about anyone thinking she was a scammer, since she clearly wasn't. The more pressing concern was publication of information about her collection of rare plants. This information was not publicly known or easily collected. Any number of unscrupulous persons could steal or even destroy these plants. The Botanical Garden was not particularly secure, but Cassidy could easily anticipate threats due to their general isolation and the need for them to be scouted ahead of time. If Huma made good on her threat, that would become impossible.

"Look," said Cassidy, turning around, trying her best to smile. "Maybe we can work something out."

"Ha! I knew it!" said Huma, provocatively marching up and sticking her pointer finger in Cassidy's face. "If you were on the straight and arrow my threat would mean nothing! Nothing!"

"All right," said Cassidy, her face was again turning to the more natural position of scowl. "You want to play rough? Let's play rough. I know something horrible about you too. Something so horrible even you don't know about it. No one else has caught on to it yet either. I won't tell anyone about it unless directly asked. But I will go out of my way to start a rumor on the Internet if you insist on threatening me."

"Oh sure," said Huma, rolling her eyes. "You think I'm an idiot?"

"I'll answer any questions you want if I'm wrong," said Cassidy. This was a highly shaded and variable truth at best. Cassidy would answer any questions from anyone at any time. That was her curse.

"And if you're right?" asked Huma.

"It doesn't actually matter whether you think I'm right or wrong," said Cassidy. "By the time I'm done you're not going to want to speak to me ever again. Which is why I'd like your word of honor now that you won't do anything to threaten the safety of my plants."

"You got it," said Huma offering her hand out for a shake, which Cassidy reluctantly accepted. "Go ahead and hit me."

Cassidy took a deep breath and walked around for a moment, trying to gather her energy. The adrenaline provoked by this conversation would probably be enough to allow her to survive the encounter. But only just barely. Cassidy badly needed to rest.

"Your origin story," said Cassidy, carefully not making eye contact. "About being raised in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, by your Palestinian mother. And your Israeli father, also living in that area, also inexplicably not at constant war with his neighbors, yet equally inexplicably not particularly involved in your life."

"Yeah," said Huma. "What about it?"

"Didn't you ever think it was strange?" asked Cassidy more directly. "Your book makes a big point of this borderline illegal relationship. But by your own account it wasn't much of a relationship at all. Your father was barely even a neighbor to your mother. He took little interest in her or you. By any literal definition he was a deadbeat while you struggled with poverty, yet neither you nor your mother held any resentment toward him."

"Why would we?" asked Huma. "The whole thing was her idea."

"And didn't that strike you as odd too?" asked Cassidy. "Your mother came from a culture where childrearing almost always happens in the context of marriage and broader connected families. In the Occupied Territories children were a liability. Maybe some day you could have grown up to take care of her. Maybe you would have died horribly. But until either such fate came to pass, you were a burden and drain on your family. Why did your mother want a child like that? A child that her own family and friends were scared to touch, lest they somehow incur the wrath of the Israelis? A child whose very existence was considered an abomination by the Israelis themselves, who did not approve of race-mixing?"

"She was an eccentric," said Huma. "It's all in the book. She's the real hero of my life you know, I was just along for the ride."

"No," said Cassidy, sighing and shaking her head. "These are the rationalizations offered to a guileless teenager, a hopeless optimist in the face of a situation that was rapidly improving beyond her ability to understand. Surely you aren't that naive now are you? Have you really no perception of a more logical origin?"

Cassidy could see by the stupid confused expression on Huma's face that she had absolutely no idea what Cassidy was talking about. Cassidy had to fight the urge to groan. This was considerably more aggressive than she liked to act- just destroying Huma's entire fantasy right in front of her.

"Your mother did not arbitrarily seduce her neighbor because she wanted a baby," said Cassidy. "She was raped. Most likely by her boss, while she still had papers that allowed her to work in Israel. Though the sex may have been consensual, whatever threats he must have made to her after the fact make the rape theory more plausible."

"Hey!" cried out Huma. "Hey!"

Cassidy waited patiently, to see if Huma could come up with a more coherent objection. Huma struggled for several seconds to come up with something clearly logical, not emotional, to challenge Cassidy's argument.

"Why didn't she get an abortion then?" asked Huma. "I bet he would have paid for that!"

"You put far too much moral stock in a man who was most likely used to getting what he wanted through bullying," said Cassidy. "And you put far too little stock in your mother's moral rationalizations and physical realities which would have such a solution seem unrealistic."

Huma started visibly puffing. Cassidy thought she might have just been having a fit of temper, but she realized that Huma had activated her memory augment, and was overclocking it to a dangerous degree. Huma was desperate to find something, anything in her past history that could contradict Cassidy's theory, and was coming up empty.

"If you wouldn't mind," said Cassidy, sighing. "I would really like to get some-"

"It's a scam!" Huma suddenly screamed. "I don't know how you did it, but this has to be another trick! There's no other explanation! No deal! I'm telling everyone what you really are!"

And with that Huma stormed out in an angry huff. Cassidy did not put much stock in the threat. In Huma's unreasonably optimistic mind, she would already have a more permanent solution in store for Cassidy soon enough. In the short-term, Cassidy could improve security as a precautionary measure- which was something she really ought to be doing anyway, given the immediate chaos that was about to befall the country. Cassidy breathed out slowly in relief as she returned to her room. Cassidy would lie on her bed, close her eyes, and wait for sleep to come. Lately Cassidy had been sleeping unusually regularly, and the day's excitement notwithstanding, she did not want to defy that record.