Nickel cadmium arms glistened in the snow, leaving pouches of empty space where their steam jets blew. Straight from battery to steam. He lit his pipe with a disposable lighter, sucking air in. His throat was slippery now; butane tastes like soap. He looked at his girlfriend and exhaled a plume of smoke. Her eyes sparkled like motor oil in the rain, an iridescent kaleidoscope and he wondered what could be more beautiful. Her nose wrinkled in a very feline pose, her whiskers twitching. They weren't whiskers, of course, that would be silly. But they worked the same or even better, picking up sheer data from the air like another sixth sense, each invisible binary sphere landing with a small vibration, a thud at that scale if the vaguest whisper in ours. He took a look down at the charred bud in his pipe, considering how sharp it looked. She turned her head and the sweetest siren song of a servo hummed from beneath, and condensation gathered in the small of her back, like raindrops on a window. That's what it reminded him of, and he laid his face against her now, feeling the cold dampness that brought back lonely childhood days. Back when the easiest way to get out of any trouble was to say "I love you," but you still always meant it. No one believes you when you're grown. He handed her the pipe. She looked at it for a second, eyes pale and reflective, before taking it. Smoke made androids as high as people. He hated that fucking word, but still.

"Chill here, Alice."

"Where are you going?" Her voice echoed from her chest.

"Just to pick up some stuff. I'll be a few hours."

Cars couldn't haul like they used to. Steam gives shitty horsepower, and the DOT decided that they might as well lower the speed limits, nationwide. You still couldn't just throw snow in the engine, though. It'd get all gunked up and wouldn't run anymore. Distilled water only. Gas stations just kept filtered fire hoses with special little nozzles on the end. Traffic was bumper to bumper on this road, not that it wasn't always. As I looked up absently I noticed some large black bird, or maybe a bat. I'd seen things like it before, but only on lots of dimehydrinate. Suddenly it fell from the sky, swooping at top speed and landing with a crash into the windshield of the Toyota next to me. A few flecks of the glass landed on my hood, such was the force. I stared at this thing, which I noticed had leathery wings spanning at least five feet, and at the face of the driver. I couldn't quite make out his reaction through the fog on his window. Was it real? I couldn't be scared the way I thought I should be. The thoughts racing through my head were more of a lifetime in asylums than global apocalypse. Maybe that's how I knew I was too sober to be hallucinating. Another of the bat-things fell on my windshield now, and a shard of glass cut my cheek as it whizzed by. I got out of my car, not even taking the keys or putting it in park, and I ran down the street as a bat-thing fell on every windshield with increasing speed, the cacophony of shattering glass blurring into loud static. I jumped onto the sidewalk like an action hero jumps from a huge explosion at the end of a blockbuster.

"Are you okay?" An elderly woman was looking down at me, her face deeply creased from a lifetime of expressing disgust. I looked back at the cars. The bats dissolved, and my brain quickly rationalized that the steam had melted them. I felt cold. Looking down, I noticed my knees were soaked from the snow, and I might've scraped them on the sidewalk. It was too cold to tell.

"I'm fine," I said. She waited too long for that response, and was walking away before I finished saying it. Thanks anyway, bitch. I climbed to my feet, turned to look at the gridlock once more, and stopped to think about what the fuck I was driving for in the first place. Oh yeah, I guess I was visiting my other girl. I felt like a dick about it, but every now and then you need something real. I found my car again and turned on the player, trying to forget that little incident.

"Who is it?" I saw Kat's face, rendered by floating spheres of light, high resolution open air plasma.

"It's Barris. Chuck Barris."

The plasma flickered purple, a filter spazzing out temporarily. It distracted me from her reaction.

"Come on in, Charlie."

We didn't make much small talk before we fucked. What would the point be, anyway? Afterwards I laid back wondering if I was doing the right thing, or really, if it was worth doing the wrong thing. I looked up at the pale orange ceiling, lit by a floating mass of incandescence, set at half dim. She always kept her bedroom stocked with plenty of candles, and soul or funk played from the walls in the cleanest of quadrophonic sound. This relationship with Kat was purely sexual, or so I liked to convince myself. Alice could do a lot of things, but there was always a little voice in the back of my mind, maybe my old dead father or God or someone, saying I'm wrong but not giving me much more than that. I looked over. Kat was asleep. This kind of selective narcolepsy might've had something to do with our purely physical predicament. I gave one last look to my surroundings, appreciating the richness I might never have, and the effort invested to make one room like a brothel. "Fuck it," I said, and I left. Her snores covered the sounds of my exit.

When I got back to that front gate, I saw Alice. She was standing there in the cold, eyes staring through me.

"Hey. I was just stopping to talk to an old friend."

She walked up to me, looking me in the eye, as lovingly as ever, and took my hands in hers. Then I heard a dry snap.

"Ah shit!" I looked down to see her picking off my ring finger like it was a daisy. I shuddered. Steam rose from the bloody mess of splintered bone and tattered flesh. She drew in very close to me, looking directly in my eyes with her own soulless stones.

"Next time," she said in the sweetest tone discrete steam-powered circuitry can produce, "it's your dick."

I was still trembling from shock, both medical and emotional, and I picked up some snow to pad my half-finger with. I couldn't focus much, so I just followed her mindlessly, hoping she was walking toward a hospital, but not really giving it that kind of thought. I stared down at my hand, starting to wonder if it was real. Wondering if I was denying reality or just seeing things again. Either way, I knew I'd seriously fucked up somewhere along the line. I looked up, and Alice was still walking in front of me. I was still shuddering. There was still a cold, sharp bone poking out of my hand. There was enough left to wiggle it feebly. The pain all ran together, like magma in Siberia. I felt ice beneath my eye making it tougher to blink. Alice suddenly stopped. I walked up to her, still trembling a little, still clutching my hand.

"What's wrong?" I asked stupidly. Her eyes looked the same as they ever do, yet I gathered that she was wistful. Maybe she felt remorse, or maybe she was hurt. Her posture was perfectly erect. Stiff as steel. She did not respond, so I waved my hand in front of her face, the whole one. "Alice?" Beads of ice were on her back. I pressed my face against it, listening. I heard nothing. No steam hiss, no servo hum. "Alice?" Her whiskers were just as frozen. "Alice?!" Shit! Why did they have to make robots run on steam? But then I thought about it. Every car on the road had to use a steam engine, and they didn't freeze. Why did she? My head hurt. I felt the veins throbbing, and it didn't seem safe. I wouldn't have much blood left. I was so fucking confused. The loss of blood must've caught up with me. I fainted.

When I woke up I was nowhere familiar. I saw Alice. Her hand, that I knew better than my own.

"Oh, you're awake," a voice said. I looked up. It was a nurse. I said nothing. "It seems you'll be making a full recovery." I frowned. These things were so generic. Happy user-friendly interface, but no personality to speak of.

"What happened?"

"When you were found, you had lost quite a bit of blood--"

"Yeah, I know that."

"Frostbite was the only thing that kept you alive, oddly enough. We found you next to this android, and since we were out of prostheses, the doctor used it for scrap parts."

"Ah," I said, crushed by the despair of my greatest girlfriend dead and scavenged for parts. "Ah!" I exclaimed, as the realization hit me and I looked down to see her arm at the end of my shoulder, with that all too familiar condensation. The nurse left. Well, I thought to myself, at least I have something to remember you by. In a sense I guess we can still be together. And then that voice in the back of my mind came back, some pissed off authority figure calling me a freak. Later I'd go home, toss back a box of Dramamine and half a fifth of Crown, and forget this whole thing. By which I mean have horrific hallucinations of death and guilt.