Episode 194: Ben Delivers (Camilla)

It wasn’t very long at the spa, because she was restless. Sitting alone with mud on her face didn’t really fix anything but it gave her uncomfortable time to think about everything. Mara was helpful and chatty, but Camilla kept forgetting to listen.

Her life was a mess. So she cleaned the mud off and went home and when she got there she found Uncle Nell in the hall with her mom and some weird guy and a bunch of metal pods that looked like they belonged in a science fiction movie.

“These machines are reliable?” her mom wanted to know.

“Guaranteed to work for ten months without repairs,” the weird guy said. He pushed one of the egg-shaped pods into a room down the hall from their apartment.

“And he will be cleaning them,” Uncle Nell promised her mom.

She stepped closer to them. “No repairs, but you have to take care of the machines?” she challenged. That sounded like a major ripoff. “How much does that cost?”

The guy turned and looked at her and did that thing guys sometimes did, where they looked at all of her before they looked back at her eyes.

Jerk

“It’s a low fee,” he said, “and a job you could do on your own if you wanted. Dust particles in the air can get into the machines and they are designed to function like a body – filters need cleaning, food needs to be provided.”

That sounded a little too important for her skill set. “I’d mess it up,” she admitted.

It sucked, really bad, that her mom didn’t argue.

“Only because you refuse to learn,” the guy said. “It’s simple.” He held his hand towards her like Babylonians and Ispitarians did. “I’m Ben, by the way.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew me,” Camilla said.

Her mom ran her fingers over the instrument panel on the pod closest to her.

“You wouldn’t believe that if you gave it a chance,” he said.

She scowled at him. Pushy jerk, like he even knew anything about her.

“Actually, you’re right; it’s impossible,” he said. She fluffed her hair with air, annoyed with his stupid everything. Why did he have to be attractive and so annoyingly optimistic?

She.

Yeah, she was married. Not even available.

And he was a jerk.

Uncle Nell’s eyebrows went up a little. “Right this way,” he said to Ben. He and Ben wheeled all the pods into the room, and then her mom followed them and Camilla just kind of stood there by the doorway while her mom looked at every single machine like she’d decided to try and find a problem with one of them.

There were too many machines. Camilla only needed ten, but there were way more than that. Maybe Spence wanted kids or something.

Ben and her mom and Uncle Nell had a really long, embarrassing conversation about how many pods there were.

“It must be an interesting time around here,” Ben concluded.

“Didn’t anyone pay you to mind your own business?” her mom snapped at him.

Whoa. Camilla had no idea her mom could get bitchy like that, at complete strangers. Usually she kept that side of herself for kids who were in trouble or, if it was really bad, her dad.

This…

What was going on?

“I didn’t ask whose they were,” Ben defended. “Just observing – that’s a lot of babies.”

“Yeah, well, not all of them are mine,” Camilla told him. Her cheeks were so bright red that she was probably going to die.

Then again, it must be worse to not be able to blush. People who didn’t blush probably got blood clots in their cheeks more easily, because they didn’t have as much blood going through there everyday to keep the paths clear. It was tragic really. She bet there was a cheek-clotting syndrome that humans had and fairies were immune to.

“You want babies but you won’t even figure out how to clean a filter?” Ben asked her. “You know babies are harder to care for than these machines, right?”

Yeah, somewhere there was a huge vat of ice waiting for him to go fry it in all his annoying know-it-all free time.

“You know I might have figured that out at some point,” she said.

“Or you could figure these out first,” he said back.

They locked eyes, because he was a jerk who wouldn’t look away and just leave her alone.

“We’re all holding our breath,” she said finally. She still didn’t look away, but she could feel her mom’s eyes boring into her. Apparently it was only okay for her mom to be rude to hot strangers, not Camilla.

No, he wasn’t hot.

He was a jerk.

He was such a jerk that instead of just letting it go, he went over to the machine and started explaining what all the hoses were and what the mesh lining thing was, and how the filter worked and how often it needed to be cleaned. “This is how you turn it on,” he finished. “Once activated, it requires a code to turn off.”

“For safety?” Gah! Why did she have to answer him? Uncle Nell smirked and then caught her glaring at him and wandered away innocently.

“Yup,” Ben said. “The power supply is located inside this compartment and is useful for the duration of a pregnancy. There are very few ways you can harm the fetus once it has been established within the system. The biggest concern is dust, which can clog the vents along here,” he said, showing her some more hosey-meshy-filtery things.

“If there’s a way, I’ll find it,” she promised him.

He got all condescending, because this wasn’t embarrassing enough: “Feelings of inadequacy are common among expectant mothers using the machines. You should find a selection of books to read to them, or songs to sing. Bonding with them in the machines is an important part of forming a maternal bond.”

She bet he had all kinds of maternal bonds with babies, since he’d obviously had so many.

It should’ve made her feel superior, but it was just a reminder that she didn’t know what she was doing either.

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