Page 189 of Nearly Roadkill
“Seriously, not a problem, I’m not offended,” laughs Scratch. “I was just so excited when I got the text from Toober here.”
“Toober.” Ah, right. My dear ol’ dad. Scratch has this grin; it’s… infectious, and I find myself grinning back at her. Sigh.
But then I’m not fangirling anymore, and I’m back to D.I. Drew, journalist detective of truth and justice and matters of the heart. And Scratch and Winc are right here in my living room! “I have to ask…. In my piece, I got as far as your getaway and you limping off together into the sunset. THEN what happened?”
“We might as well tell, Scratch,” Winc says, looking lovingly at Scratch.
“I’ll start,” says Scratch, sitting down right there on my carpet. “I live with Winc about half the time; the rest of the time I raise goats and get my sanity back.”
“Hey!” says Winc. “I make you insane?!”
“Where you live makes me insane!”
“Well, your goats make me insane!”
“My goats are my sanity!”
“Well, then they’re not helping!”
The two of them crack up—they’ve had this “argument” before.
My cat’s sniffing Scratch. I don’t think she’s ever sniffed goat before. Scratch dangles a sly hand on the floor in front of her and picks up talking to me.
“I still use computers a little. I have no electronic connection to the Internet most of the time, and I upload my work to a file transfer system.”
“It’s not called that anymore, Scratch,” says my helpful dad.
“Whatever. Anyway, I just edit stuff and send it back to people who pay me. ‘Life’ is Winc and my goats. Wanna see some pictures?”
“As for me,” Winc interrupts quickly, “I still love tech, what can I say. But don’t let Scratch fool you. She’s still active in the Electronic Frontier Foundation.”
Scratch is active on my carpet, rolling around with my cat who has really taken a liking to her.
“And I’m working with the most amazing AI,” says Winc. “I can actually train it to search out social media algorithms that are designed to hook kids into this or that terrible thing.”
“Right!” says Scratch, rubbing the cat’s belly. “And then we expose them as bad guys!”
Chicken doesn’t letanyonetouch her belly.
Scratch continues more seriously. “If you ever wonder if greedy bastards know what they’re doing, they do. They totally and completely do. Same old greed, new tools.”
“She’s right,” said Winc glumly. “You know the bookThe Chaos Machine?”
“I love that book,” I add. “But, Winc, you have to tell me: how did you not die?! I mean, please tell me?” I am a dog with a bone. But she waves me off.
“Oh, that’s a long story,” she says. “I wanna talk aboutyou. Look at you, you’re all grown up and out loud genderqueer!”
“Nonbinary,” I correct reflexively. (Fuck, I can’t believe I’m correcting the real live Winc about gender!)
Winc catches my eye, and her eyes are smiling.
“My apologies,” she says. “We never had a word for what we were being back then, and now there’s somanywords! So you’re nonbinary.”
“You’re defining yourself by what you’re not,” laughs Scratch, still down on the floor with the cat. “I love that.”
I give Scratch a thumbs-up and continue, determined to be the journalist here, not the subject. “You two were pioneers in virtual fluid embodiment of postmodern gender theory. Where do you stand on that now?”
A moment’s silence.
