“Full house,” I said.

I smiled, but the tension of the moment strained across all three of my avatars. My primary avv—the one with the best poker face and thus the one handling the cards—faced Marcy’s primary and studiously ignored every other body in the room.

My other avvs, like rest of the nonplayers, sat just behind the table as still as possible, waiting for Marcy to end this one way or another. The generous helpings of shrimp and brie soured in my tertiary avatar’s stomach, and I regretted indulging my tertiary with those last two plates. I searched the eyes of all of Marcy’s avvs, but found no hint as to whether I’d pushed my limits again. I’d probably be fine, though; I’d caught Marcy in a bluff before.

Marcy drummed her fingernails on the green felted table, then flipped her cards over.

Straight flush.

The adrenaline crashed, and my primary’s body shook uncontrollably. I closed my primary’s eyes and tried to pull from my secondary’s Pilates training to get my primary to breathe deeper and calm down, but none of my usual tricks worked. I’d royally screwed myself now.

Marcy wasted no time. Though I’d closed my primary’s eyes, she showed the winning cards to my secondary and tertiary, and shared a smirk with her other three avatars. The other players around the table had moved on. They gathered chips and cards as though their whole world hadn’t been ripped apart.

Which, for them, it hadn’t. They’d all folded before this nonsense got out of hand. But then, everyone else here had warm, fuzzy collectives that would never consider betting an avv, let alone their primary.

I was not one of those collectives.

“Marcy! Your cards?” one of Daryl’s avvs called.

Marcy handed them to her second best avv, who handed them to the Daryl’s card-shuffling avv.

“Best out of seven?” I asked.

Marcy laughed and kissed me.

All three of my avvs stiffened in response to this invasion of privacy. It was an uncomfortable kind of sexy. This avv of Marcy’s had always been my favorite, but I’d imagined this first kiss occurring after I’d won her body and brought it into my collective, not the other way around.

Mid-kiss Marcy fiddled under my curly hair with the little transmitter screwed in at the base of my skull. My other avvs glared, but didn’t dare argue. Daryl would never bet an avv of his own, but he’d enforce a win with his primary’s meaty fists, if necessary.

“You should be grateful I’m ending the game before you lose the other two,” Marcy’s tertiary avv said.

Which was true. I’d been the idiot to suggest raising the stakes too high, and until I could get another crack at winning my original avv back, I would have to do my best with the two avvs I had left. Such savagery—who in the world functioned with only two avvs?

Not Marcy. She was now up to a respectable six avatars, the perfect collective household.

She was turning my head now to get a better look at my gadgetry. Her breath tickled the hairs on my neck, and her perfume wafted into my nostrils. She looked at me with a mixture of revulsion and coyness, and turned back to her work.

“You like it? Don’t worry, this avv will get very familiar with my perfume. Now, this might—”

My vision darkened.

Crackle.

Agony.

Snap.

One of me screamed. One of me swayed in my chair. One of me fell off my chair and hit my elbow and my bones shook.

And then one of me was gone.

My secondary recovered first and asserted control as primary. I looked at Marcy and her new avv with my only two sets of eyes left in the world. I felt so small, so limited. Was I missing some colors from my vision? My avv—her avv, now—gazed back at me. I tried to reach out, to pull it back, but of course there wasn’t a single thread of consciousness from that curly-headed avv to follow.

Marcy held her new avv’s hand, waiting for it to adjust. When it did, it smiled at her.

“See? Life’s better as Marcy. Now—mmm, let’s celebrate. Nothing’s better than kissing yourself.” She pulled my—her—avv close and kissed it with passion.

I couldn’t watch.

“Get a room,” Daryl said, wrinkling his nose.

“Good idea,” Marcy said, and stood up with my—her—avv moving in perfect synchronicity with her other four. I moved to leave, too.

“Hard luck,” another player said.

I shrugged my avvs’ shoulders and followed Marcy out of the penthouse close enough to show I didn’t care she held my former avv’s hand, and far enough away I didn’t have to smell her perfume or talk to any of her disgustingly perfect avvs. She stopped at the elevators, but I headed for the stairs.

“Going down?” my former primary called.

Hell no, not with you.

“I have some calories to burn after all that food,” my new primary said. It was the handsomer, more poised, of my two remaining avvs, and the only decent thing I had going for me now.

The stair doors slammed, mercifully shutting off Marcy’s answer.

That avv had been a lot of things. The most educated. The natural leader. And I’d bet it away and had no collateral to get it back.

Now I needed to figure out how I was going to pay the rent next month. Wrapping tacos and teaching Pilates two times a week wouldn’t be enough by half. My former avv’s administrative assistant position at the construction company had been the main wage earner, but that belonged to Marcy now. I could go to her, maybe, and ask her for a pro-rate of my avv’s last paycheck, but knowing Marcy she’d turn me down, and I couldn’t pursue any of this legally without getting in huge trouble myself. Avvs moving to other collectives after adolescence happened, though rarely, and Marcy had my avv legally—as far as anyone else knew—but blowing the top off our poker games didn’t seem like the best move right now.

Marcy was long gone by the time I exited the stairwell, my secondary huffing and puffing. I almost called for a cab on my phone, but could practically feel the dollars in my bank account cringing.

I took the subway instead.

I finally got home, starving and wishing I had snagged more of Daryl’s food, and nearly ran into the redheaded preggo primary of Liza, my next-door neighbor. Her avvs were more attractive than they had any right to be, but she wasn’t smug about it. She was probably the only adorable family unit I knew that I didn’t despise.

“Hey,” her secondary said, a burly avv with a penchant for black polyester. “Is your primary working late?”

“Kinda,” I started to say, then corrected myself. “Well, no. My primary . . . left me unexpectedly.”

Left me for someone else’s bitchy collective, I thought, but didn’t say that. Liza had only lived here for four months, saving up for her expensive six-avv wedding, and didn’t know how many avvs I’d lost. She had no reason to be suspicious.

All of hers avv’s eyes brimmed with tears.

I was sad, sure, but crying?

“Oh wow. Wow, I’m so sorry,” her primary said, her hand unconsciously rubbing her belly. “Will you try merging to another collective? I’ve heard some do that.”

I fiddled with my keys. “I . . . don’t think I’m ready put myself out there right now, you know?”

“Yeah, I know how that goes.”

Oh sweet, family-oriented Liza.

I unlocked my door, but before I could escape the awkward conversation, Liza spoke again.

“Hey. I know someone who might be able to help. In the meantime—take care, ok?”

“Will do.” I kept my voice remarkably light.

Liza’s green-eyed avv graced me with a smile before linking hands with the others and heading down the stairs, presumably to feed each other wedding cake samples or some other cheesy shit.

Who did she know that would have an avv they were willing to release to another collective? Liza didn’t seem like the sort who would approve of that sort of thing, let alone try to help make a switch happen. But even if she really did know someone who could connect me with another avv, what was the likelihood that avv could cover the rent?

And who would want to join a two-avv collective anyway?

I slunk into my apartment. My new primary avv had stupidly agreed to cover the 6 AM Pilates class in the morning, so I promised myself I’d only play an hour or two of video games, giving myself plenty of time to get a full-night’s rest.

As usual, I woke up on the couch to the blaring of the alarm clock and the video game stalled out. My avvs detangled themselves. There was no time for breakfast together. No time for anything, ever.

My primary rushed out the door, leaving my secondary to lock the door and make it to the bed before collapsing into sleep again.

Halfway through the day, I decided I was coherent and ready to try calling Marcy. It took me a few hours, but I called her in the evening, just after my old primary finished work.

Because she’s a bitch, she answered with my old primary.

“Miss me?”

My gut clenched. “Cute, Marcy. Planning any games this week?”

“Maybe. What’s your collateral?”

“This hot Pilates body right here, Mar—”

She cut me off. Her clipped tone would never be mistaken for her poker voice. “No one wants your Pilates teacher. Or your taco maker.”

“You owe me—”

“I don’t owe you a thing. I practically did you a favor winning that avv. I’m dealing with all your bad habits now.”

“So give it back.”

“But this avv is so very pretty,” Marcy cooed. “Call me when you can offer something decent.”

She hung up.

“Dammit!” I scanned my scanty apartment. There was nothing left to bet anymore.

I came home from the morning class three weeks later, eyes burning and bleary, and found Liza knocking on my door.

“My secondary won’t hear you,” I told her.

“Hey! Haven’t seen you in a few weeks.”

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Picking up extra shifts and classes.”

“Well, I have good news!” Liza’s black-clad avv said. “My friend works at the Department of Connections and needs to find a home for an avv pronto.”

A charity case from the DoC?

“Oh,” I said aloud, adjusting the waistband on my yoga pants. “Um, okay. Can you give me more info?”

“Yeah, I can get you those details, but you’ll have to decide this morning. What’s your contact info?”

I must have paused too long, because Liza added, “It’s really not complicated. They’ll run a basic background check for crimes, and you’ll bring in your ID and your bank’s routing number.”

“What for?”

“The routing number? To send your check.”

Then it hit me. The Department of Connections was a welfare program. I would get a stipend for housing a complete wreck in my collective brain.

Adding an avatar from the DoC felt dirty. Everyone had heard the stories about those unattached people on the news—homeless weirdoes, sketchier backgrounds than my own. But not even a fifteen-year-old goes unattached to other avatars these days, and beggars can’t be choosers. I wasn’t a beggar though really, was I?

I thought of the red-inked Final Notice I’d torn off my door and crumpled in my bag last night. The stipend would probably be a pittance, but . . .

Damn it.

Liza’s friend called me right when business hours started, I panicked and said “yes,” and the next six hours blew by. Before I knew it, I was at the Department of Connections in an overly bright exam room plastered with posters of laughing collectives, exchanging glances with a handsome yet haggard avv named Logan Higginbotham. He was the former primary of his collective and a lawyer who clearly came from money, but had no family or friends who wanted to link up.

A lawyer. Not a homeless bum after all.

The guy looked like a blond dream, but was messed up enough to succeed in killing three of his avvs before a cleaning lady found him and called the police, saving him. A different kind of crazy from my own, but I’d touched all kinds of crazy over the years, and I was still kicking.

We were directed into creamy white chairs—surprisingly comfortable for a government entity—and the DoC doctor explained to us the initial set up we’d experience—only a partial connection, to allow us to ease into each other’s spaces, until we requested a follow-up appointment to fully connect us.

“Only two of you?” he asked, while the doctor fiddled with his transmitter—with proper instruments, not hacking in like Marcy had.

I shrugged. “That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? To form a more perfect union?”

The doctor chuckled. “Good one,” he said, but Logan gave me a hard stare and didn’t crack a smile.

To the DoC my two avvs were an oddity, but it was legal—though rare, of course—for avvs to switch to another collective. As long as they didn’t find out about the poker games, I would be good to get my new avv and the check that came along with him.

Logan didn’t attempt speaking to me again for the duration of our appointment, and when the partial connection was established, he carried a sullen, foreign presence in my consciousness who refused to interact verbally or mentally. To be fair, our connection was the same tenuous link parents have with their child—in my experience, anyway—so I was basically babysitting a moody teenager.

As we left the DoC, each carrying one of his suitcases, I tried to feel some kind of connection, but my primary had been ripped off as easily and comfortably as an arm from the body only a few weeks ago, and I barely knew my new “self,” let alone a complete stranger. Sensing his presence in my network was like touching your dead-numb arm after you slept on it wrong—you knew you were touching something that belonged to you, but it was a one-way touch.

I decided I’d be patient. We’d talk when he was ready.

We turned the corner for the subway, and I decided I’d waited long enough. I’ve never been very good at waiting.

“You want to talk about it?” It felt strange verbalizing to my own avv, but I could tell there was no way in hell he was going to be into any kind of mind-melding crap tonight.

“You want me to kill you like I killed my other avvs?” he asked in a flat voice.

“They didn’t mention you were a joker.”

“Who said anybody was joking?”

“What, nobody told you about me?”

“They didn’t have to; anyone can see why you’re a two-parter.”

“Shedding the excess one avv at a time,” I said. “We were thinking of splitting up anyway, going old-school.”

Logan laughed, a nasty note to his voice. “Wouldn’t that be something.”

We got to the subway—not terribly busy this time of day—and rode it to the first stop before I spoke up again, “So, you’re a lawyer. Don’t tell me—tax law?”

“Family lawyer.”

I smiled with both my primary and secondary and leaned back against the glass, arms folded. “That explains a lot.”

He glanced sharply at me. “What were your jobs, again? Pilates teacher and Tasty Taco employee? I’m already booking my day in court to divorce your sorry ass.”

I nodded and smiled, mainly to piss him off. “And who else is going to take care of you right now?” I paused, listening for an answer I knew wouldn’t come. This was a government-mandated connection, at least for the first week. We were consenting adults, after all. The best he could do was ask for another avv to connect to until he burned through all his options. You have to be connected with at least one other body, of course—you can’t go around feeling lonely.

“You know what?” He stood, suitcase in hand. “I’m done at this next stop.”

The train lurched and Logan swayed to catch a pole, and turned to wait for the grimy sliding doors to open.

I held my tongues, and gambled on the notion that I was his avv’s primary and he had to come home with me. Hopefully I’d woo him with my cunning wit later.

My bet paid off. The doors opened and a swarm of avvs flooded the gap between the door and Mr. Snappy Lawyer, making it impossible for him to enact his running-away routine.

Somehow Logan followed me home, though he was definitely fuming the whole way. Probably because our link was just strong enough that, like a child, he couldn’t totally run away from me. His perfunctory glance around my apartment at the food-crusted dishes and cluttered piles of Important Things didn’t seem to assuage his feelings, nor did the sight of my secondary heading for the couch to resume my game from the evening before.

“Welcome to the pad,” I said, with an arm sweep any Vegas showgirl would envy. “Hungry? I’m pretty sure there’s a loaf of bread in the fridge.”

He held his withering gaze on me for a few seconds before he began ransacking the kitchen cupboards.

“Whoa,” I said, trying to block him without success. “What are you looking for?”

“Cleaning supplies. You keep them around, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah. It’s around here somewhere. My last avv was super into that kind of thing.”

“That kind of—” he began, then stopped. He opened up another cupboard and was rewarded for his efforts with a sponge, some ragged towels, and a cleaning spray. He pushed the dirty dishes in the sink.

“So what happened to your last avv?” he asked, as he sprayed and wiped with a zeal that should only be reserved for exorcising demons.

I leaned against the wall, just out of his way. “I kind of lost it.”

“Oh yeah? Splitting personalities is supposed to be only a joke these days.”

I smiled, but he didn’t let it go.

“How’d you lose it?”

What the hell. Might as well get this over with. “In a poker game.”

“Huh,” he said, scrubbing harder at a particularly troublesome lump on the counter. “That explains a lot.”

“Ha, ha.” I pointed. “You missed a spot.”

He threw the sponge at me, which I caught just in time. “Looks like you have plenty to share.”

I sighed but leaned over and scrubbed with him. Was this waffle batter or crafting glue? I glanced at his dark eyes focused on the work.

“You’re awful at this,” he said.

“I told you, this isn’t my thing.”

“Was it your last primary’s ‘thing’?”

“Not really.”

“Clearly. How long has it been just the two of you?”

I shrugged. “A month.”

“Any kids in the picture?”

“What do you think?”

“Chill. Just making sure.”

“Why, you interested?”

He stiffened for a moment, then attacked the lump until the entire mass broke off the counter with a jerk. “That’s not really my thing right now.”

For the first time in a long time I cringed at something I’d said. I wasn’t ready to ask the next question, and I knew he sure as hell wasn’t going to answer if I asked anyway.

“So maybe messing around, then,” I said in a light voice. “I always found that easier anyway.”

No response.

I leaned in. “If you find it a little overwhelming to get used to all of me, we can just start with this avv for now.”

“Speaking of your avvs, introduce yourself. Really. What do you do? How long have you been you? Besides ‘losing’ your last avv.”

“Oh, I come and go.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m still getting used to this one. Have you done Pilates before? The positions I can put this one in is—”

“This one’s new, too?”

“Relatively. About a year, I think?”

“And the gamer schlub over there on the couch?”

My secondary reddened and shrunk lower on the couch, but didn’t turn around from the game.

“That’s my taco wrapper you’re talking about, thank you very much,” I said, my primary shooting Logan a dark look. “Two years for that one.”

“What the actual—I’m a family lawyer and I can’t believe this. Don’t you have any decency? You’re living, breathing human beings. You deserve better.”

“Um, you must not know my friends.”

“How many avvs have you gone through?” he asked, dropping the sponge and turning to face me.

“Three . . . this year.”

“Wh—And the year before that?”

“Four.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Logan wasn’t the first avv to ask me this question.

“You’re a lawyer,” I said. “Not a psychologist. When that changes, we’ll talk about what the hell is wrong with me.”

“No,” Logan said. “No. This is exactly the conversation we need to have so I understand what you got me into. If you ‘lose’ me, I swear—I will wreck you.”

“Not everyone has fancy jobs,” I said.

He turned to rinse the sponge out. “You really lost all of them during poker games?”

“I really did.”

“Did you pick up most of your avvs during these games, too?”

“How’d you guess?”

He turned back to the counter and began savagely scrubbing a crusty plate. “This is shittier than the shit I thought I was leaving behind when I killed myself. Okay. Here’s the plan. When they plug me in next week, I’ll step in as primary, and we’ll get things under control.”

“Uh, no,” I said. “I’m getting my old primary back soon, and it’ll take care of things nicely.”

“Like it’s been doing for the past few years, if not forever? You have an addiction.”

“We’ll run elections, then. It’s the democratic way.”

He shook his head but said nothing.

I joined my secondary, who I’d allowed to play all the way through that whole conversation from the safety of the couch, and picked up a controller. Mr. Snappy moved into the bedroom, presumably to clean up there, but I didn’t follow him. We weren’t fully connected, of course, but I sensed his presence enough to know he hadn’t run screaming from the dust bunnies in my bedroom.

Him, demanding to step in as primary. Unbelievable.

I was in control. I’d kept it together this long, I didn’t need a lawyer—a complete outsider—coming in and running a dictatorship like I wasn’t capable of taking care of myself.

We both crashed somewhere around three.

“Get up,” a voice said. “You’re helping me with laundry this morning. Both of you.”

Swish swish-swish. I opened my eyes. Scruffy was sweeping the floor. He had shaved, and it turned out he cleaned up pretty nice for not having access to the stuff from his old apartment yet.

That reminded me.

“Hey, my contract is running out soon on this place, so why don’t we live at your place? You’d be more comfortable there, right?”

“How sweet of you to think of me. I’d love to. Tell me, how much can a taco maker and a part time Pilates instructor cover of the rent for a flat in Midtown East?”

He had to go and make things awkward.

“I’ll see if I can pick up another class or two. But once I get my other avv back we should be fine.” He tossed the laundry bag at me, and my secondary caught it and padded off to start a load of whites.

“Get your other avv back? Didn’t you lose it in a poker game?”

“Yeah, but I’m totally getting it back.”

He stopped sweeping. “Please, explain how you’re going to waste your time and energy on getting something back that’s illegal to trade anyway.”

I snapped my primary’s fingers and pointed at him. “That’s exactly the problem. I was wrong to lose it, and I’m not going to let it go until I get it back.”

“What does it matter?” he snorted as he brushed the mess into the dustpan. “It’s just another avv, right? You go through those faster than most people wear out a pair of pants.”

“No, it’s not just another avv. That was my original avatar. Original-original. The one with the strongest sense of self.”

“Why were you dumb enough to gamble your core identity away in the first place?”

“Because—I don’t—let’s talk about your issues for a minute. I’m providing a safe haven for you so you’re properly installed in a collective. What issues are you bringing into the mix? Besides suicidal tendencies.”

He dumped the contents of the pan into the trash.

“You’re deflecting, but we’ll come back to this. Yes, I tried to kill myself, but this avv didn’t take the right dose. So you can expect some depression, a little PTSD over watching my selves twitching on the kitchen floor until they died, and some serious resentment that I was assigned to you.”

I squinted. “Your file said you have a history of suicide attempts, and you just tried to claim primary? That sounds . . . irresponsible.”

“And you’re whoring yourself out, bit by bit. How are you even you anymore? I’ve noticed you haven’t declared a gender.”

It felt like a gut punch to both of my avvs.

“What does ‘you’ even mean?” I burst out. “Grade school, they talked about the ‘amazing collective’ we were all waiting to form soon, and I followed the protocols. My parent helped me gather the rest of my avvs from the same good schools everyone else did. It never clicked.”

I’d never said that aloud to anyone before. It was as embarrassing to say as I’d always thought it would be.

Logan paused. “Never?”

“Never. That orgasmic, all-fulfilling self-love and connection shit means nothing.”

“Of course, it’s not so dramatic, but everyone feels something—”

“NO!” I shouted with both avvs. “None of it. I’m a mess. I’m hodge-podged together. No one I’ve ever won through my damn poker games has ever really connected. I talk with my avvs. We feel each other, we sense each other. We get it on and we make it fun. But I don’t . . .  get it.” I continued, my voice lowering. “I see every other collective on the street, batshit crazy in love, but I’m the Neanderthal trying to figure out why everyone else can handle this new thing called fire and not run screaming.”

I searched his eyes and waited for a response, but his poker face was impressive.

Why I was being this open with him? My previous primary never exposed myself so much to my other new avvs. They could see into my thoughts more than Logan currently could, of course, but none had ever pushed me quite like him. Did I care what he thought? I wasn’t sure. The longer I stood here, though, I realized I didn’t see the point in hiding this. Not from an avv. Whether because it was easier for me or for him, I wasn’t sure.

When a response didn’t come, I smiled. My primary wrapped an arm around my secondary, who had just returned from starting the laundry. “So. Welcome to my brain. Ready to get hooked up to this baby?”

He shook his head. “I’m supposed to be the one with the problems.”

Why did rejection hurt so bad? I didn’t even know the guy.

“Let’s get back to the DoC and get you reassigned, then,” I said.

“Why would I do that?” he asked, cocking his head. “I’ve seen the weirdos out there. They come into the courtroom all the time. I’ll take my chances with you.”

“So your plan is to . . . what? Fix me?”

“What? Whoa. No. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I like working with known quantities, that’s all.”

I turned away to get ready for the day and put both my avvs in the shower at the same time.

My avvs hugged while the hot water poured down my backs, into my eyes, and pooling in the space where my muscled and toned primary and my softer, larger secondary pressed close. I needed a break after all that heavy stuff, especially my secondary.

My original primary’s parent, Dina, had never spoken so openly about feeling, though she was nice enough. All of her avvs worked well together—at least from what I remembered—so I couldn’t think of anything to complain about.

My current primary and secondary had harder childhoods. All the avvs making up my primary’s parent Javi had immigrated to the States as teenagers and young adults, and managing his collective and a couple kids had been more of a challenge than he knew how to handle sober, while my secondary’s parent Tiff didn’t know how to parent without raising a hand. Neither of my avvs had the financial means or educational opportunities to ever expect to step in as primaries. They knew they’d be purchased (you might as well call it that, anyway) to submit to someone else’s consciousness, and then to spend years attached to one person and then traded to another, and then another—well, they fit right in with my original. In the detached way that any person who is terrified of themselves can fit in.

And yet, despite the similarities my avvs shared, despite sharing the same magical consciousness like every civilized person had for the last forty years, why did this embrace feel like nothing? What did other people feel when they hugged? Did they ever feel better? Would I feel something if I hugged Logan? I squeezed harder, but it just felt like pressure. No soothing balm to my soul, no swelling of love in my breast.

I released my avvs from their embrace and scrubbed my faces red.

I finished my shower and came out to find Logan had made an appetizing breakfast with what little there was to work with in my kitchen. Three plates were sitting out, the steam circling up lazily, even from the toast.

“The man knows how to scramble eggs,” I said.

He looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“I wasn’t being sarcastic,” I said. “They smell great.”

As we ate, Logan said, “It’s fair I warn you I’m heading into work in a few minutes.”

My primary stopped mid-bite. “Already?”

“These court dates won’t wait,” he said with a shrug.

“Won’t your clients have issues with you representing them in family court?” I asked. “You only got out of the hospital, what? Three days ago, the doctor said?”

“You, of all people, to ask me something like that.”

“Yeah, yeah. But really.”

“They don’t have to know, do they?” Logan said, spearing the last few bits of egg on his fork. “It’s not like my other avvs came to the office much. We each had our own careers to juggle.”

I hadn’t asked him about his other avvs yet.

“What did each of you do?”

“Besides this avv, a doctor, a stock broker, and a pharmacist.”

“Holy shit. I knew unicorns like you existed, but . . .” my voice trailed off.

He stood up with his plate and fork and began washing them at the sink.

“I’m hardly the only one,” he said. “All my friends had equivalent skill sets.”

No wonder he tried to kill himself, I thought, and for the first time since I’d met him I felt a twinge of sympathy.

Some whisper of my thoughts might have slipped through our connection, because he rushed out the door a few minutes later, his mouth firmly set.

I realized I didn’t know when he’d be back that night. I had his number, of course, but couldn’t come up with anything clever to say—the morning’s conversation had sucked quite a bit out of me—so I settled into a video game with my secondary until it was time for work for both of us.

Both my primary and secondary got back from work before Logan, and after a quick trip to the grocery store, we set to work whipping up a big bowl of ramen. Surprisingly Logan turned up just as we were setting the bowls out.

“Smells good,” he said, as though the conversation from the morning hadn’t happened.

My primary bowed, but my secondary just blushed, and we sat to eat.

“Do you like living here?” he asked, after finishing a particularly long noodle.

“I don’t know, does anyone like living with cockroaches?”

“Why don’t you move?”

“We had this conversation this morning,” I said, through a mouthful of pork. “Your place is too swanky for these avvs, remember?”

“These aren’t our only options,” Logan said, waving his fork at me. “We could move to something in the middle of abject poverty and overpriced penthouses.”

“On our combined income? That feels a little ambitious, doesn’t it? For some lame Pilates instructor and a Tasty Taco employee? We might be overreaching our step.”

“You don’t have to settle for those jobs. There’s night classes, and online classes, and—”

My mind flooded with memories of every conversation about money and ability and aptitude my avvs had ever had. Even with a couple dozen backlogs of previous avvs in the back of my mind, every single one stung. I’d never felt competent, and the times I got close, I’d get overconfident and end up betting the best avvs away. Logan was just one more avv trying to fix me.

My primary pushed its bowl away, a little rougher than necessary. Logan looked up.

“Hey, Logan. Hi. Not interested in discussing this right now.”

Logan nodded and we continued eating in silence.

“Leave me the bowls,” he said when we’d finished.

“Ugh, no. I can help,” I said, and I carried my own bowls to the sink and my secondary began washing the dishes.

A few moments later, Logan appeared by the sink with a towel. He dried the dishes as my secondary finished rinsing them, while my primary put them away. It reminded me of doing the dishes with my secondary’s parent Tiff, each of us moving around each other in the kitchen. It had been like that with Dina, too, though that memory was less clear without my original primary connected to me anymore.

When the last fork clinked into place, I sighed and turned.

“Well, I’m going to play for a while,” my secondary said, nodding to the screen in the living room. “You want to join in?”

Logan hesitated.

“Yeah, why not?” he said.

He joined me on the couch, and we played for a few hours. He was clumsier than me at the controls, which was irritating, but I guess everyone has to start somewhere. When we came to a break in the game, he turned to me.

“Let’s do it tomorrow,” he said.

I stared at him, nonplussed.

“Do what?”

“Get fully connected,” he said. “We’ll go to the DoC and have them hook us up all the way.”

“You didn’t sound so eager this morning,” I said, still feeling the sting of his words.

He sighed. “I was wrong,” he said, sounding as though the words cost him something to admit.

“I thought those court dates waited for no one.”

“I can take a day off for this,” he said, sliding back into his poker face.

I thumbed the controller as I considered. What was his angle? Why did he want this now? I couldn’t come up with an answer, but how could I say no to this chance? Marcy would jump at the chance to get a guy like this—which she wouldn’t, of course.

Because my luck was bound to come back. It just had to.

Logan would never be my primary, though, no matter how superior he thought himself to me.

“I’m on board,” I said. “Let’s do it tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said, then hesitated. “Should we go to bed, then? Be ready for the big day?”

My primary pursed its lips. It’s not like we were getting married or anything. “Well, yeah, I guess. Right after this game.”

Logan stared at me, his thoughts just out of my reach.

“I’ll see you in the morning, then,” he said. He gave me a smile that didn’t extend to his eyes, and went to the bedroom.

“It’s fine,” I told myself, as my secondary looked at the bedroom door, less willing than my primary to leave Logan in the bedroom alone. “Just a few more minutes.”

I woke to the sound of butter and eggs crackling on the frying pan.

“Morning,” I said, rubbing my eyes, trying to wake up.

“Your eggs are done . . . now,” he said, sliding the contents of the pan onto two plates with toast, and handing one to each of my avvs. I sat and ate gratefully.

“You already ate?” I asked, watching as he moved to the sink to deal with the frying pan. Why did he have to cook and clean all the time? What point was he trying to prove, that he was better than me in this as well?

“Today’s a busy day, then,” I said, through a mouthful of egg. “My secondary has work, but they said that was fine, right? As long as one of us was there?”

“Yeah, they said that.” He resumed scrubbing the pans.

“Good,” I said, feeling a rise of irritation I couldn’t explain. “Because we’re going to need to work hard to be good enough for the likes of you.”

He wrinkled his eyebrows—was it possible for that face to look soft?—and opened his mouth to respond, but seemed to change his mind. He finished his breakfast and we left the apartment in silence, my secondary heading to grill up the morning breakfast burritos and my primary and the charity case to the DoC to get legally hooked up. How romantic.

On the way to the subway I let him lead the way. I fell back far enough to be out of earshot, and called Marcy.

“Hey there, desperate,” Marcy answered. It was my old avv again, of course.

“Nice to hear you, too. Do you have a game tonight?”

“Why, do you finally have something worth betting?”

“When was the last time you had a lawyer with an apartment in Midtown East?”

“I’m intrigued. This is a step up for you, baby.” She gave me a time and a place for that night, and we hung up, just as Logan turned to look for me. I jogged to catch up, and tried to ignore the feeling of dread my secondary exuded.

The DoC was running reliably late. We arrived fifteen minutes early for our eleven o’clock appointment, and sat in silence on the wooden benches until 12:36. As we waited I circled my ankles and stretched my wrists and neck, a “boredom” routine I recommended to my clients, but nothing calmed my anxiety about the game tonight. What if I lost again? What if I never got my primary back? Did I have the guts to steal it back from Marcy? Probably not.

“So. Do you want to know anything else about me?” Logan ventured thirty minutes into our wait, pulling me back into the present. He was leaning back with one ankle crossed over his thigh.

“We’re going to get all that when they hook us up, right?”

He leaned back and inspected me like—what? What was he hoping to see? “Yeah, I guess we will,” he said, with a stiff smile that didn’t reach beyond his lips.

The assistant called us back, mercifully ending the conversation.

We sat down next to each other on the same comfortable, creamy white chairs from last week. There we signed the paperwork, and the DoC doctor checked our transmitters, then connected us via the computer.

After so many connections, I ought to be able to describe them perfectly, but most of mine weren’t achieved through legal channels, so the connections were rarely as elegant and simple as this one. It was far less painful than the way Marcy had done it, but manually disconnecting and reconnecting like she’d done was an emergency backdoor, in the event of cases like—well, like Logan’s.

One moment he was a fuzzy, nebulous feeling in my brain, one I knew existed over the temporary link but couldn’t touch or control. The next moment, with nothing more than a shift, he was me, and I him. I saw the room from his eyes, ran his tongue along his perfect teeth, stretched his stiff shoulders. We traded our memories in an instant—too much to sort through all at once, and no way to cherry pick which memories and thoughts the other would notice, but enough to taste their life in a messy sort of way.

Through the deluge, the first thing I felt from him was pain. A squeezing, numbing weight on my heart.

And hatred.

And loathing.

For me.

No, not for me. For Logan, and all the avvs he’d been connected to before me.

I tried to reconcile all of his memories into my consciousness. I was a doctor now—in a past avv, anyway—and a stock broker, and a pharmacist, and a lawyer, all too busy being important, carrying the strain of expectation and pretense, to take care of themselves.

There was always some adjustment that came with a new avv, but the memory of his other avvs twitching and convulsing on a pristine kitchen floor felt at once as familiar and as foreign as anything I’d ever experienced in my life. So much weight to bear.

I realized my eyelids were squeezed shut, tears leaking from each. When I pulled them open, he was staring back at me, features carefully blank. The doctor wouldn’t know what he was thinking, but he was me now.

And he knew about tonight.

“Everything okay here?” the doctor asked.

“I’m fine.” I could feel the gulf between Logan and me widening. Because he was in my head, I knew he was accessing my memories, watching me lose avv after avv in poker games.

The doctor stepped back. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” he said. “Give you a moment to get settled in.”

He pulled the door shut behind him, and Logan spoke as soon as the door clicked shut.

“You’re going to sell me out tonight.”

The fact he was speaking to me instead of just giving me his thoughts mentally, like all my other avvs eventually did, felt disconcerting. Everyone took a little time to fully assimilate, sure, but Logan cringed as far away from me as possible.

He felt so . . . small.

I leaned in to hug him, to comfort him.

He leaned away.

“I don’t want to lose you,” I told him.

It’s not personal, I wanted to say, but from our link, Logan had already heard me think it through our link, and I knew I’d only made things worse.

From the link I knew It’s not personal didn’t mean much to someone who thought so little of himself, who hated and despised himself, that he always put his selves’ connection last. Through our link he felt like dead weight—though there was no “like” about it. He was tired of carrying himself, and now that he’d found out I didn’t want him, either, he might literally and/or physically collapse at any moment, leaving me and my secondary to drag him out to the curb with the rest of the trash.

I felt sick seeing behind his veneer, tasting his depression. How had he lived all these years with it eating at him like this? From my experiences with a couple dozen of avvs, I knew I’d felt depression, loneliness, and betrayal.

I’d overlooked them all.

Where were those ones now, the other avvs I’d used as collateral on a poker table? Had they ended up splayed on a kitchen floor, the life draining out of them as they tasted nothing but bitter pills poisoning their tongues, felt nothing but an overwhelming, condemning sense of lack, heard nothing but the thunderous sound of no one coming to save them from themselves?

How had I escaped the same fate? It wasn’t through any hard work or conscientiousness on my own. Maybe it was only a matter of time before I ended up the same way, even if Logan had never come into my consciousness.

My primary’s heart tightened. I felt something for Logan—love, maybe? Sympathy? Empathy? Whatever it was, he was me, now, and he needed me.

I reached out to hug him.

He knew what I was thinking, though, and he flinched. I couldn’t force my affection on him, even though this feeling—whatever it was—threatened to blur my vision.

“You can feel this,” I said, speaking aloud for his benefit, since he refused to interact with me any more than necessary through our link. “I know you do.”

He shrugged.

“I won’t go to the game, ok?” I said. “I know you can’t handle that right now, and that wasn’t . . . cool of me.”

He didn’t respond, and the dead chill that ran through his body disturbed my consciousness.

The sliver of my consciousness that roughly made up my secondary asserted itself.

You are useless at this.

I agreed, and acquiesced.

Miles away I pulled off my gloves and threw them down next to limp lettuce shavings and tasteless tomatoes and walked out, muttering to my boss about a personal emergency. I didn’t wait to hear the response.

My primary sat next to Logan in silence and waited for my secondary to arrive. Logan knew my secondary was coming, but it made no difference.

“I’m fine,” I said for us—both times the doctor checked on us. “Just need a little more time.”

He left us alone. This was apparently the one bureaucratic office in existence that didn’t rush people out the door.

Finally my secondary arrived. I strode through the door, and saw my selves sitting there, both the ones used to being in charge, both waiting desperately for something to give.

“Hi,” my secondary said, replacing my primary in the seat next to Logan. I didn’t use this voice very much, even at work. It was strange—yet satisfying—to be the one to speak for my selves. It was softer, gentler than my primary.

Logan’s eyes flicked toward me, and I saw my secondary through his eyes—heavier than the others, the one I’d always utilized the least. The one I’d ignored the most, because what did a taco wrapper have to offer?

I held out my secondary’s hand, tentatively touching his knuckles and waited.

His fingers twitched.

I slid my hand over his, my larger hand cradling his own.

“Hi,” I said again.

Logan said nothing, but I felt him waiting, anticipating what I would say.

“I’m not going to the poker game tonight,” I said. “I’m not going to any more poker games.”

There was a pause, and I felt him relax just a little into my touch. His self tickled the edges of my consciousness.

“You want the original more,” he said.

“Not more than you,” I said, running a thumb over the top of his hand. “Maybe that avv wouldn’t even be comfortable with the kind of lifestyle I want to have now.”

I envisioned quiet Sundays. Trips to the grocery store all together. Reading books aloud. Nights where Logan could fall asleep in someone’s arms, unashamed of his depression, until the collective could absorb the pain and replace it with hope.

Of course, the old primary would want that, too, Logan’s self thought. I felt his panic rise.

I raised my arms cautiously.

Maybe. Probably. But you’re the one I want to spend time on right now, my secondary responded. Aside from being a greedy bitch, Marcy wouldn’t mistreat my avv. She might even love it.

He only paused for a moment before sliding into my waiting arms. He sighed into my shoulder and his chest softened against my own. It felt like he’d allowed me to take some of his burdens away—for a few moments, anyway. I was glad to take them on.

Hugging him felt . . . good. Good for me, and good for him.

My primary barged in and joined us in the typical way, and we created a three-person hug, foreheads pressing together, breathing one another’s air, building the threads of something resembling—love, maybe? Was this what a “real” collective felt like?

When I was ready to try getting my old primary: when Logan’s self had reached a point of acceptance, however you measured it, when my primary learned to be a little kinder and a little less impulsive, when my secondary (which I was more and more certain needed to become my new primary) was comfortably assertive. In short, when I had reclaimed the bodies under my stewardship as my own—if at that point I was ready to tame the instability my old primary had brought, then I could reach out to Marcy and ask for my old primary back.

And if she said no? Well, I knew a great lawyer.