The question sat in the air between them. It was not rude.
It was not defiant. It was simply the most direct translation of what he was asking her to choose, and it was the kind of question that had exactly one honest answer, and that honest answer would require her to explain why she was firing him anyway.
Evelyn looked down at the desk. Cameron placed one hand lightly on the back of her chair, barely a touch, barely visible, and she looked back up.
"I'm sorry, Mason. Your conduct violated our safety protocols and the scope of your position."
"We're terminating your employment effective today." Mason was quiet for 3 seconds. Then he buttoned the top button of his shirt slowly, without hurry, and looked at her one last time.
"Before you run the car this weekend," he said, his voice carrying nothing louder than a suggestion, "you should read the original design drawings for the GT7, not the current version, the original. If the company still has them."
Then he walked out. Cameron watched the door close.
His hand, which had been resting on the back of Evelyn's chair, pressed down briefly on the fabric before he released it. Below the window, through 15 floors of glass and steel, the GT7 sat in its bay with an engine that sang exactly the way it was built to sing.
Evelyn stood and looked down at it for a long time after Mason left. She told herself she was thinking about liability protocol.
She was actually thinking about the phrase he had used, the original, and the particular weight he had placed on it, the way someone places weight on a word that contains more history than the word itself can hold. He collected Luna from the neighbor's apartment at 3:00 in the afternoon.
She was at the kitchen table with a drawing of what appeared to be a robot made entirely of circles, and she ran to the door when she heard him come in. "You're early," she said, surprised in the pleased way of someone whose expectations have just been exceeded.
"I don't have work anymore," he said. Luna looked at him.
"Are you sad?" He crouched down to her level, the way he always did when he had something real to say. "No, but we're going to find something new."
"Will the new place have cars?" He almost smiled. "Every place has cars." She nodded solemnly, satisfied, and went back to her robot drawing.