Aidee: Today I’d like to take a short moment to interview
two of my favorite men, Dr. Forbes Pohle and his research assistant, Oliver
Lennox. So I couldn’t help noticing after reading both The Applicant and The Break-in, are you both each other’s first time with a man?

Oliver: Well, not technically my first time. I’d been with a
few other people.

Forbes: Is this really an appropriate question for an
interview? I thought we were going to talk about some of my research.

Aidee (frowning): Okay, Forbes, can you tell us more about
what you’re working on currently. Is it another robot?

Forbes (shifting nervously): Umm. I think that’s classified.

Oliver (chortles): Really? You’re totally not going to
answer any of the questions, Doc?

Forbes: I’d love to answer any questions Ms. Ladnier has as
long as they are not too personal and not pertaining to sensitive work
projects.

Aidee: Let me try again. Can you give me more information about
this time travel device? How did you manage to solve the grandfather paradox?

Oliver: The grandfather who?

Forbes: She means the thought experiment that if someone
could travel back in time, they could kill their own grandfather and then null
their own existence, but if they nulled their own existence, then their
grandfather would live and then they would subsequently be born only to travel
back in time to kill their grandfather, etc., etc., etc.

Oliver: Oh my God, did you just hurt yourself with that
explanation? Aidee, why do you need to know that?

Aidee (shrugs): I guess I’m just interested. I’ve never
really wanted to travel back in time, so it’s a little fascinating.

Oliver: But you’ve been in love before, right?

Aidee (looks at Oliver warily): Yes.

Oliver (looking over at Forbes): And were you so in love
with that person that you couldn’t imagine a life without them? Someone you’d
do anything, go anywhere, be anything you had to in order to stay with them?

Aidee (looks from Oliver’s rapt expression to the blush
creeping up Forbes’s stoic face): I guess time travel doesn’t seem so
farfetched when you put it that way. Do you have anything to add, Forbes?

Forbes (clears his throat): I had the easy part. I just had
to convince him to stay. It took me four tries, but—

Aidee: Four tries? But I only counted two. You asked an
older Oliver to stay in The Applicant and then you succeed in The Break-in.
When were the other two tries?

Oliver (slaps Forbes on the thigh): That’s another book.
Sorry, Aidee. We’ve got to go.

Aidee: Wait! I want to hear about—

Forbes: Really, the lab’s probably in a shambles again.
We’ll talk again soon.
(Forbes and Oliver scramble out of their chairs and out the
door before Aidee can stop them.)

Aidee: Well, crap.

If you’d like to read more about Forbes and Oliver, check out my novella, THE BREAK-IN published by Dreamspinner Press.