"You... what the hell are you crying for? Didn't sleep?"
V waved a hand in front of Lier's eyes. When he failed to react, she prepared to grab the idiot and shake him.
But Lier smacked her hand away and snapped out of his imaginings:
He had to admit that, as Maya spoke, he could picture the love between his mother and father.
"Keep it down!" Lier waved a hand. "Give me a minute. I'm adjusting my cyberware."
"Tch."
Thwarted, V got up from the wooden crate, tossed Lier's clothes back onto his head, and stretched.
"How much longer before we go out and stretch our legs?"
"Any minute now-don't wander off."
As for Lier, he still had to handle things on the other side-
His parents' story happened to make good material for a speech.
Two ostracized immigrants, both of whom had lost their parents early, had come alone to an unfamiliar country, to New York, the city of dreams, in search of a better life.
But the only work available to them was manual labor, if there was any at all-jobs requiring nothing but physical strength generally only hired men, while women without brains could only do disreputable things.
Maya was fairly clever, and her family had passed down some experience as rural doctors, which gradually helped her get the hang of working as a care aide.
But she was an immigrant, so she could only do the hardest kind of work at charitable facilities: moving between beds to care for people on society's margins, perhaps changing diapers for paralyzed patients, wiping down their bodies, helping them turn over, and moving them, breathing disinfectant and pungent medicine in shabby care facilities, with no room for a break during working hours. Night shifts were even more grueling.
Mentally, she