As Aron and his friends continued their decision-making process, the people whose lives they were deciding were busily trudging along in their day-to-day lives. All they had were their aspirations, dreams, and the hope of a better (or vengeful) future. That was what forced them to keep moving forward despite their difficult lives.
....
Robert Watson, a British immigrant to America, was one of the people on the list in Aron and his friends' hands. Currently, he was in a conference room with his lawyer. On the opposite side of the table from them was a woman wearing almost comically thick makeup. She was dressed in a leopard-print top that clashed with a wide, hot pink belt, a tight purple skirt that only came halfway down her thighs, flesh-colored stockings, and bright red stiletto heels with a four inch shiny chrome spike. She had bubblegum pink hair styled to the nines cascading over her shoulders, and on the table in front of her was an enormous bag covered in the Louis Vuitton "LV" logo, as if she was afraid anyone wouldn't know it was expensive. The rest of her clothes were obviously branded as well.
Sitting next to her was a man in his late twenties that looked like a Ken doll, wearing a bespoke suit. He had a million-watt smile and a face that had been plastered on bus benches all over Los Angeles. He was a divorce attorney and his name was known far and wide as an unethical shark more than anything else.
Robert had a morose expression on his face, but the woman sitting across from him was giving him a mocking smirk.
The silence was broken as Robert's lawyer said, "Thank you for coming today. We're here to discuss the division of assets in the Watson v Watson divorce case. Let's get to work, since no one in this room wants to be here any longer than we actually have to. Robert, please begin."
As Robert opened his mouth to speak, the Ken doll on the other side of the table interrupted, "Hold on there. Lisa has a few things she'd like to say first."
Before Robert or his lawyer could say anything, she opened her mouth and, in a shrill voice, began speaking. "The law entitles me to half of everything you have. But you're gonna give me more, or else—"
"Or else what, Lisa?" Robert tiredly said. His voice was hoarse and low, and exhaustion was writ across his face in big, bold letters.
"Or else I'll go to the newspaper! Your precious 'reputation' will be trashed. You owe me! I was the prom queen in high school and all of my friends married up, but instead of marrying a senator or a CEO, I married a pathetic sack of shit like you! I was stupid to ever think you would amount to anything at all, so you owe me everything for the youth I wasted on you! Now how am I supposed to support myself, eh? You think all this," she gestured at herself, "is cheap? What kind of man can I find now, eh?"
"Oh, I don't know, Lisa. Maybe pick from one of the ones you cheated on me with!"
"Well if you weren't such a miserable failure, I wouldn't have cheated on you!"
"You...!" Robert couldn't help but clench his fists under the table, close his eyes, and take a slow, deep breath. In a monotone, he continued, "You don't get it, do you? Most of what I had, I earned before the marriage, and you're not entitled to any of it."
"Oh? I don't remember signing a prenup! So let's just go to court then, Bobby. I'm sure you'll be happy to keep everything but your reputation, you... you... you spousal rapist! Yeah, I'll tell them you raped me!" Lisa said with a self-satisfied smirk on her face. She had wasted the best years of her life married to the man across from her, and not a single one of her many lovers over the years was capable of supporting her in a manner she would like to become accustomed to.
Sure, maybe they could afford one luxury bag, or a dress—her outfit that day had been given to her by no less than four different men, for instance—but not a single one had the power, or the bank account, she desired.
The back-and-forth argument between Robert and Lisa continued, with both lawyers trying their hardest to get words in edgewise and just praying that their clients wouldn't say anything incriminating that could be used against them when this divorce inevitably went to trial.
...
Ryan Walker was another person on Aron's list.
Currently, he was laying in an adjustable bed in the living room of a small downtown apartment. The sounds and smells of low-income urban living drifted in the open window along with a shaft of light that illuminated the dust floating through the air. It wasn't an unusual scene, as he was always either in this bed or in his electric wheelchair.
That was a customized prison, just like his bed, as the only things he could move were his face and a single finger.
He spent most of his time on the internet, trying to chase away the shame of being unable to provide for his wife. They had promised to support each other through school, but after she finished supporting him, and before she could finish her degree, he had slipped on a patch of icy sidewalk on his way home from work one night and fell directly into the path of an oncoming snowplow.
The city was as sympathetic as they could be, considering it was a no-fault accident, and had covered his medical expenses and enough for them to at least subsidize their living expenses for a few years, but as he couldn't work, his wife, Amanda, could only drop out of college to take care of him. Luckily for him, GAIA OS was capable of accommodating his disabilities, enough so that he could earn a meager income editing webnovels for indie authors. It wasn't much, but it was honest work, though it was a complete waste of his master's degrees in biophysics and neurobiology from Cornell University.
He used to run drug trials for AstraZeneca, but that was obviously out of the question now.
A few minutes later, keys jingled and a beautiful woman walked in the front door. She was wearing jeans that had all the color washed out of them and a loose, long-sleeved t-shirt with a logo that was so faded it couldn't be made out anymore. Her rich brown hair was in a ponytail that flowed out of her baseball cap and down her back to her shoulder blades like Willy Wonka's chocolate river.
She was carrying two paper bags full of groceries and mincing her way through the cluttered, cramped living room toward the kitchen. She set the bags down on the counter, then gave Ryan a kiss on each cheek and his forehead.
"Good morning, starshine, the sun says hello!" she chirped. It seemed she was just the kind of naturally upbeat, happy person that couldn't be brought down even if a mountain landed on her shoulders. Ironically, that upbeat attitude only made Ryan feel even worse.
She worked an arm around behind his shoulders and her other under his knee, then slid the hoist under him and lifted him into his chair. Then she moved the attached computer monitor around in front of him where he could see it and turned on the webcam. The AI assistant installed could track his eye movements through it; that was mostly how he managed to browse and work.
He immediately got to work as his wife went back to putter around the kitchen. Soon, the inviting smell of bacon and sound of sizzling eggs made its way to his ears along with his wife's humming.
A few minutes later she brought a tray to the living room, loaded with bacon, eggs, fresh hash browns, and french toast, with a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and one of milk. Ryan wasn't much of a coffee drinker, but he definitely loved OJ.
A tear fell from his eye, and Amanda noticed it. "What's wrong, love?" she asked.
"I just feel like a burden. You supported me all the way through two master's degrees, and I couldn't even hold up my end, much less be the breadwinner you deserve. You should've been a museum curator by now, not a night shift cashier at the truck stop! You work so hard to support me... I wouldn't blame you if you went for a divorce. Then you could be happy and baggage-free, maybe even reach your dreams. You could fall in love again, with someone who could love you the way you deserve, not a burden you—"
"You shut your mouth right this instant, Ryan Herbert Walker!" she interrupted. "I love you, not your money, not your degree, and not your job. We're getting along just fine, and I swore before God that we would be together for better or worse. Just because worse happened doesn't mean I love you any less, so you get that thought out of your skull right now, you hear?" Amanda was a lovely soul and could forgive almost anything, but people insulting her husband or talking down about him was a line she wouldn't—couldn't—allow anyone to cross.
Not even her husband himself.
"...yes, dear," Ryan could only say in a quiet voice as he silently cried.
Amanda saw the continuing tears and downcast expression on his face and wrapped him in a hug. "Cheer up, baby. At least now you can say 'it can't get any worse' without making things worse, right! Silver linings and all that...."
'I swear I will find some way, somehow, some day, to repay this wonderful woman for being the best and brightest part of my life,' he thought as he and his wife cried in each others' arms, his breakfast growing cold and forgotten on the tray table next to them.
