All the World's a Stage

She held her pose but angled her head slightly differently, and he got the impression that she was giving him a funny look through the opaque headset. "Calming you down," she mused, back in her natural voice. "Just what I was going for."

"Thanks, Lauren. Happy to help more if you have anything else like that."

She laughed, turned on her heel again, and did her catwalk back to the chaise. The cincher definitely had an effect on her posture, as well as on the roll of her hips as she strutted. "I very well might, especially for my second costume. You're going to flip when you see that one. But I definitely want to finish up this one."

Lauren had finally withdrawn her dress itself from the garment bag. It was a ruby red, sleeveless, fit and flare dress with a very faint white pindot pattern. It had a strip of pink floral embroidery around the hem, which like the petticoat below it, only came halfway down her thighs. She slipped it on. It had a little bit of stretch in the torso that let it hug itself to her cinched waist. She picked up a pair of white day gloves and a costume-jewelry pearl necklace from the duffel bag, then catwalked towards him again. The topmost elastic bands of her stockings were visible when she walked, and occasionally even a glimpse of the suspenders themselves would slip through.

"Maybe not as educational or calming as tightening my cincher, Sir, but would you like to zip me up?" She turned and knelt with her back to him now.

"Can't say no," Toby replied, and obligingly zipped the white zipper up her back. Meanwhile, she slipped the day gloves onto her hands.

"And now this? Think you can do it?" She held the pearl necklace behind her back. Toby shrugged—she was more than capable to doing these little things herself, but there was no reason not to help out, either—so he quickly figured out the catch and closed the necklace around her neck.

Lauren rose again, but this time, not to her feet. She rose her behind off her knees, but then slipped back and sideways until she was sideways on Toby's lap, with most of her weight on his left thigh. "Well, Sir," she asked. "How do I look? Do you like it? Will I please my hardworking Stepford husband?"

Toby laughed. "You totally look the part and totally sound the part. The audience will definitely be freaked out by the transformation."

"Mm-hm. And you, Sir? Do I freak you out?"

"I think girls in general freak me out," he said, "but you less than any other one I know."

She laughed and shook her head. "From you, I'll take that as a compliment." She was back in her normal voice again.

Toby rolled his eyes. "Good, then we're on the same page, because it was supposed to be. You're going to do awesome as Charmaine Wimperis, because you're just talented, but I like you as Lauren Vandermeer even more."

"Oh yeah?"

"Of course yeah."

"Well, I think I've worn this long enough to be completely overcome by it. My transformation is complete. Want to take it off me?"

Toby chuckled. "I do. I miss your eyes." He slipped the Oculus off of her, and exactly as he said, met her eyes.

"You like what you see?"

"I do. You have smart-person eyes. Maybe that's why they're scripting you to wear this so much. Makes the transformation easier to believe."

"Oh yeah?" she said. Her eyes suddenly changed now, too, going vacant and content. "It's so wonderful to be able to see you again, Sir!" she said, and her voice was, if anything, even more bubbly than it was before. "Is there anything you'd like me to do for you, Sir? I've been ever so neglectful of my wifely duties. But no more. I'm yours to command."

"I retract my previous statement. Now you freak me out."

She smiled and snuggled into his shoulder. "I'm waiting, Sir," she said.

I'll never get back to my book if I don't give her something to act out, will I? "Pimm's Cup for me. Sex on the Beach for you."

"Oh, just for me, Sir?"

"Um ..." he struggled to process what she might be saying.

She laughed and shook her head against his shoulder. "I'll be back in a jif," she said. She then stood up and left the library. Toby noticed that she was still doing her catwalk, even without the headset on. He shook his head. Before he opened his book again, he got up for a moment and found himself a spare spiral-bound notebook from the secretary desk. A lot of times, when enough different strands of thoughts started passing through his head all at once, he would take notes on each of them. He had developed his own personal shorthand that could be written in parallel far more quickly than normal handwriting. This was definitely an occasion for it. It was great to have Lauren back, and he totally wanted to support her theater dreams, he knew she lived for it, but it was still a little distracting. While he was up, he thought of something else, a book that she might like, and found it after another moment of searching.

As he returned to his armchair, he thought he heard voices from outside the library. He dropped the notebook on the end table and crept to the double doors. He recognized that voice. That was Liz. His big sister was home a little early. He glanced at the clock on the wall. Not that early, actually, he realized. Lauren had been here longer than he had appreciated.

Well, good, if those two are talking, there's a good chance I can get to the end of my chapter, at least, and get some good notes down, too, before Lauren comes back. And he did exactly that. Maybe twenty minutes later, in the stillness of the library, he heard the clack of heels approaching on the floor outside. His ears perked up. Another set of footsteps were with it.

The door opened, and Liz was there, just pushing the door open to let Lauren through. Liz still had her business clothes on, a smart skirtsuit and sensible pumps. Lauren had her hands full. Toby let his eyebrows raise a little bit. She was carrying a bit more than the two cocktail glasses that he'd expected. She was carrying the family's best silver platter, a large one that only a large, strong man could ever think of carrying one-handed. The two cocktail glasses were on that, along with a cocktail shaker, a crystal decanter, and two twenty-ounce plastic bottles, one a little more than half-full of ginger ale and the other the same with lemon-lime soda. There was also a compartmented tray with a small assortment of fruit and cheese snacks, as well as a few breath mints.

"Hey, Liz!" he called. "Welcome home!"

"I'll say!" said Liz. She held up a rocks glass. "Your girlfriend remembered that I like Negronis and apparently has become pretty good at making them! And saw me coming and had one in my hand thirty seconds after I came in!"

"What? Oh, she's not my girlfriend."

"Oh really?" She gave Lauren a pointed up and down look. Lauren shrugged and gave Liz a look that was somehow both indecipherable but knowing. Toby was a little deflated by that. He called those the Girl Telepathy looks. He had solved two-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles in under an hour more than once, but he had never been able to deciper a Girl Telepathy look. But it obviously had something to do with Lauren's costume, so he gave it his best shot.

"Liking her costume?" he asked. "Did Lauren tell you she got cast at Somerville Community Theatre for their Stepford Wives remake? That's her Charmaine Wimperis costume. Post-Stepford transformation."

"She mentioned," Liz said with an equally indecipherable smile.

"Think it'll have the effect they're going for?"

"It sounds like the jury's still out on whether it has its intended effect. But I can certainly appreciate the talent and effort going into this production either way." She turned to Lauren. "I would appreciate you. That's all I'm saying."

Lauren suddenly let her eyes go distant and switched to her sweet, enthusiastic, vaguely robotic voice. "Oh my, thank you, you're such a darling. I do so wish you could stay longer."

"But I definitely can't," Liz finished, and Toby got the impression she was about to break out laughing for some reason. He shook his head, and by the time he finished, the door was swinging closed and Liz was gone.

"Well that was odd, but a Negroni will get on her good side any day. So, nice work."

Lauren laughed, and even her laugh was unnaturally cultured and ladylike in this character. "Well, thank you, Sir. And here's a little something to get on your good side." She set the tray down on a nearby table and handed him the Pimm's Cup, taking the Sex on the Beach for herself.

"Cheers to being home?" he offered, holding up his glass.

"Cheers to having you home, Sir," she answered.

That's right, she's been home the whole time, he remembered. Well, hopefully it wasn't too awkward. It didn't seem that way—quite the opposite. If anything, she broke character a little, because her smile became less deliberately vacant and plastic. Actual human warmth accidentally showing through there, Lauren, might need to work on that. Either way, their glasses clinked, and he took a sip. She had done a great job with the Pimm's Cup. There was no way she had forgotten that it was one of his favorite summer drinks, but it also wasn't widely known or practiced, at least not in the US. Not to mention that she had only turned twenty-one a few months ago, now that he thought of it.

Chapter 3: Accompaniment

There was a long silence as they sipped their cocktails, and his mind began to wander again.

Lots of robots are already programmed to make cocktails. Some are the size of refrigerators, though. What would it take to transfer knowledge as complex as a cocktail recipe directly into someone's brain? We can already transfer images, with some difficulty. So you could transfer a recipe card, maybe, but then they'd have to "read" it in their mind. What would it take to make it something like background knowledge, something already learned, not like reading a mental picture of an instruction card? His mind began to follow up on those questions with answers and possible sources of additional answers, and was far enough down those paths that he almost jumped and spilled his drink when Lauren spoke again.

"How'd I do, Sir?" she asked. "With your drink?"

"I was just thinking, amazing," he admitted. I guess I could have let her know that instead of just thinking it to myself. But most of my thoughts never see the light of day. "Great for late afternoons and early evenings here," he added, gesturing at the hazy golden early evening sun streaming in the domed skylight. It was already late enough that none of the summer sunlight directly reached below the second-floor balconies along the massive shelves. "Relaxing." He smiled at her, and formed a more coherent sentence. "Thanks for helping me relax. Not always easy for me."

She smiled, took a step closer, and bent over at the waist again slightly, bringing her head down closer to his. It also had the effect that unless he studiously looked right at her face, he would be looking straight down her cleavage. He studiously looked right at her face. "Yet you still look a little tense. Anything else I can do to help you relax, Sir?"

"You know you don't have to. Not just because it's a lot to ask. I'm totally convinced of your acting skill now."

"Oh, but I simply must, Sir," she said, still in her Stepford voice, though her eyes were sharp and smiling and focused now. "I can't bear the thought that you might go to your bed tonight tense from the burden of all your vital work when there was anything at all I might've done about it." She brought her torso level again and stretched her arms to the ceiling, arching her back slightly. "So, Sir? Anything at all?"

Something did idly occur to him then. "I can think of something," he said. "But I think it's too early in the evening for it."

Her eyes sparked and lit, and the real warmth showed through her deliberately plastic smile again. "Oh yeah?" she said. "What have you got in mind, Sir? Maybe I'll be up for it, too. Even in daylight."

"It might be something you haven't done in a while."

"I mean, that might just make me even more up for it, Sir. You never know unless you ask."

"And, I mean, I'm sure you didn't come over here just to entertain me all day. You've already entertained me a lot with this theater stuff."

She gave a light shrug, and somehow managed to do so more with her neckline than her shoulders. "If entertainment is done right, we're entertaining each other."

"Pretty sure I wouldn't be able to keep up with you even if I tried."

"Don't sell yourself short."

"Short-selling is generally a fool's game anyway. Buying puts is slightly better but still not generally going to end well."

She rolled her eyes. And she turned the saccharin and sunshine up yet another notch, even as her words themselves communicated something a little different. "Sir. Just. Tell. Me. What. You. Want."

"Gyaah! OK, well, I guess I was wondering if you've kept in practice on that thing?" he gestured to the baby grand piano. "I saw your video a few years ago of Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major, opus nine, number 2. I remember thinking then that I wish I could've been there to see it live."

She looked at him for a long moment, and then another one. Then she leaned her head back, closed her eyes, laughed, and finished the second half of her drink in a single pull. "I remember you texting me about seeing my post," she said. "I was really happy that you saw it and liked it."

"One of my favorites," Toby admitted.

"Say no more, then," she said, and catwalked over to the piano, setting her empty drink glass back on the silver platter before she went. She lifted the cover from the keys and drew one white-gloved hand along them, and then along the wood around them. No dust. The Chapmans paid a hefty amount every month for a good professional cleaning service.

She looked inside the bench for sheet music and quickly found it—they had a sheet music collection for all of Chopin's Nocturnes, of which Liz had borderline-passably learned two at one point in her youth, and Toby had struggled through one.

The library was soon full of beautiful, emotional, contemplative melody. Toby sipped his drink, and read his book, and occasionally glanced over at Lauren. She had seated herself so her petticoat and the skirt of her dress pooled around her on the piano bench rather than trying to slip everything under her, which the petticoat in particular would have made hard. It was hard to say, but her eyes were still dreamy and distant under the spell of the music dancing from her hands, just in a very different way than when she was acting like a mind-controlled Stepford wife. This was real peace.

She was beautiful.

It wasn't the first time Toby had thought that thought, but it was a dangerous one. That way lay both painful rejections and ruined friendships. And if she had ever been interested in being more than just friends, she would have found a way to give him a sign somehow, he was sure of it.

He let his mind slip back into his book, and also let his mind drift back into all his parallel thoughts about robotics and artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and bio-integrated circuits and data transfer, now with a few extra strands of thought about theater and music, too. The background music helped. He often put soft classical piano music on a handy Bluetooth speaker, but having it live was so much more potent. Somehow, it was like a liquid coolant to the processor of his brain, allowing it to run so many more processes without overheating.

I could really get used to this. Wonder if Mom and Dad would let me hire a pianist for whenever Lauren can't be here. Or just doesn't want to be my free study aide. She has her own life.

Lauren finished the Nocturne in E flat major, and then, without being asked, moved on to Chopin's Nocturne in D flat major, Opus 27, Number 2, and then Bach's Prelude in E flat minor from Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Her white-gloved hands finally came to rest, and she turned to look at him, swinging her legs slowly up onto the piano bench.

"I liked that," he said. "A lot. I never even knew you knew the D flat minor Nocturne. Not surprised at all, though."

"Oh yeah? Why not?" She was smiling.

Toby pondered that. A fair question. A lot of things in this world did surprise him. So why not this? "I mean, why would I be? You're brilliant and you like to perform. Brilliant people tend to get good at what they like, right?"

"Oh, you're sweet."

"Really? I mean, thanks, but I was just being accurate. Anything else was accidental."

She lowered her head, shook it, and chuckled softly. The edges of her smooth blonde hair fell forward around the sides of her head. "I believe you. But still. Accident or not, I like hearing it from you."

"I'm happy, then."

"Tell me, Mr. Accurate, did you meet anyone else at Notre Dame you'd have called brilliant, too?"

He brightened. "You'd never believe this, but my theology professor the one semester of that I took. Nothing that was going to get me out of computer science to be a monk or anything, but he was brilliant. Must've been in his late seventies but still sharp as a lightsaber."

"Mm-hmm. Anyone else?"

"I mean, one grad student that I worked with on a research project. He got his Ph.D. and he's at AMD now. I kept going with what we had been working on together and it actually grew into my senior honors thesis."

"You still keep in touch with him?"

"I do! Long-term pipe dream maybe, but he and I might go into business together someday, something involving this kind of stuff," he held up the book he was reading. "I could see us trying to get a real project off the ground someday, something we might be able to build and sell. Lots of MIT grads do that eventually. Try to make a little company to sell out to one of the big tech players."

"I bet you really will do that someday. You keep in touch with anyone else? From your class? Or anyone still there, future graduates?"

"I mean, I just graduated, but I'm going to try. But I'm terrible at that."

"You kept in touch with me. Mostly. Sorta."

"I know. I guess that was just easier somehow. Habit? Ugh, that came out wrong. You've just kind of always been there in my life. No other really brilliant people I can say that about. Well, except Liz, and she's six years older."

She gave another look at him for a long, quiet moment. "I like being in your life, too, you know."

"Me too. I mean, I'm glad you came today."

"That's still a work in progress," she said.

Huh? Odd way to talk about a day. "Well, sure, stay as long as you want. Lots of time left in the day. And I hadn't planned on going anywhere."

She threw back her head and laughed. "Oh, Lord," she breathed.

"What?"

Chapter 4: Rising Action

She shook her head. "Nothing. But I think I'm done with this outfit. Might wait a bit before putting on the next one, though. It's a lot less comfortable. You OK with that?"

"Oh, sure, absolutely."

"Great," she said, and she stood up from the piano, took off the pearl necklace, and began to take off the sleeveless red dress, looking at him the whole time except when she pulled it up over her head. When it was all the way off, she draped it over her arm and walked across his field of view to the garment bag, and hung it back inside. Then she returned to where he sat, just as he had opened his book again. He closed it. She knelt upright so her chest was level with him.

"You seemed to like putting them on," she said, drawing one hand slowly up the line of hook-and-eye closures of the waist cincher. "Why not see if you like taking them off?"

"Worth a shot," he said, and he did, and it was indeed an easy, repetitive motion, though twice as fast as the first time because he had needed to tighten it two rows. Unhooking the cincher took only one row. It came free in his hands, and he handed it to her.