The Lepton and the Silver Lily by Michael E. Marotta

“Chengzhang,” spoke the sign, adding, “Hasna. YOU are SAFE at Lytton Springs where you build the you you want, like y’know?” The old man in a lightweight blue exo paused, then waved the luggage carrier up the steps into the lobby of the borganic clinic, and followed it inside. He needed fins and flippers before he could explore Lake Fredericksburg. He already had gills: they were adaptable. But flopping about is inconvenient, so he got rid of the fishfeet right after the trip to Dinosaur Ponds. Until tomorrow afternoon, he would be on his own born feet.
    In the morning, clad thin in short cottons striped gold and green, sitting on the wooden steps of the plasteel porch, he massaged his soles until the treads came up. He stood up when the wo-man stepped out of the clinic. Lepton looked without seeing and said, “Permit me. I am Lepton. Lepton Arbitration.” The wo-man returned his blank gaze. “I call me Silver Lily. Silver Lily Reflections.”
    “Silver Lily,” Lepton asked, “I splore down the road. Wuju-cuju walk with me?”

Silver Lily agreed. On Road 1854 facing southeast they enjoyed the warm December sun. After a hundred meters, Silver Lily spoke evenly and slowly. “Where ya been over fifty years?” 

Lepton replied, “Hiding undercover off the grid invisible. Hide a leaf in a forest. Now I need the borganic clinic to grow fishfeet for me. Here I yam.” Lepton looked with clear vision to see Silver Lily and Lepton said, “Last I saw you was ArmadilloCon 52. You don’t look a day over 70.”

The wo-man nodded hir thanks. “I was working on 60. You have been preserved.”

Lepton shrugged and then he said, “All the bio I can grow or buy and I still do physical training long after I left Camp Mabry.” 

Silver Lily shuddered and hugged semself and stepped away.

“What’s wrong?” Lepton asked.

“Mabry was a holding pen for the Red State. What a joke. Red. Better Red than dead cuz if you’re dead you cannot enjoy everything your leaders have given you.”

Lepton sighed. “I know,” he said. “I spent five years working and living in a gas station in Leander when the State Capitolists moved there to be closer to the bullion depository and made Inner Space Cavern the data center. The cabinet only took themselves. With virtual everything on cameras everywhere, it was not necessary to go into the office to bird dog your minions. The Panopticon was the Singularity. As a convenience clerk, I was invisible and otherwise hidden among the leaves.”

Silver Lily held ser fingers out and waved them in the air. “Dja ever learn t’play keyboards?”

“No. Why?” 

Se said, “I have a clip you can use tonight.”

“Thanks.”

“Small price?” se asked.

“OK,” Lepton replied. “What?”

“You are a 3M but you have no beard. Cosmetic or political? Don’t worry. I’m filtering.”

Lepton sighed. “I’m filtering, too. So we’re wavery acceptable. On a planet over three-fourths female I was going to be the last manly male man in Austin, but I went for the add-in.” He rolled back his shoulders. “No boobs. Zippy nipples though. Now I have more choices around the holidays.”

Silver Lily smiled. “So, you do have a what? tribe? clade? Peeps who know ya?”

Lepton stopped. And stood. “It was always too easy to be open with you. I had to guard myself.” 

Se raised ser tone, pitch, and eyebrows. “Against me?”

“Yalways scared me. And I liked that bout ya because it let me deal with yer spirit by waya yer brain.” 

They paused and shifted apart and quivered while they recentered themselves and then resumed their walk. Silver Lily a-hemmed and looked at the ground and then spoke in careful old school. “My wifeband died in the plague of 53. One way or another aging leaves you open. Before that, I was another wildly peopled writer. Flown to fencons until those zeroed out. Then I turned to engineering. All the scifi paid off big time when zillionaires wanted stuff. Only, they didn’t know what to ask for. Like I ask ya, how many open bids dja think I lived off promising FTL? Ya press the button. The thing takes off and disappears and thatchyer part of the bargain. They be paralyzed by internal displacements and dissonances not able to process what happened. We got camps fulla 50-year old zoomers.”

“I’ve been to some. They sell off their tech toys.” 

“When I see one trying to panhandle dillo dollars for kolache, I wonder if I put thirm there. So, now, I’m gettin my pluripotent cells harvested for new lungs. I wantedagat backinta running and the price was right and I had money from resale of an old trilogy and I showed good on a vid for some retrofelk. I wasn’t gonna do it but I looked at the money.”

“Never look at anything…”

“… you don’t want to sign.” They walked on. 

Lepton heard a small metallic squeak, looked deep into a distant stand of trees and jerked to a halt. With his right leg, he swept Silver Lily’s left out from under sem, grabbed ser waist and broke ser fall to the ground. They were hit by a blast of compressed air and noise from an autonomous Tesla two-four tank, an erratic aging robot left over from the neighborhood wars when the metaburbs broke free from Austin. It rolled forward, pivoted, and took aim. Lepton was on his feet, on his palm a black and silver cylinder. He fired at the tank. The jacketed mosquito shell pierced the turret and exploded inside. The machine stopped.

Lepton ran to Silver Lily. 

“I don’t need rescuing!” se said, kipping up, shaking off the dust, and striding back toward the clinic.

“Not now,” he replied.

  

The End

The Lepton and the Silver Lilly (c) Copyright 2026 by Michael E. Marotta