Free Shadow Unit 15 by Emma Bull, Elizabeth Bear

You've covered the board pretty well. I have to sacrifice if I want to break through. Like so—" Eddie moves his bishop, taking a pawn on the edge of the board, in place to take Dice's queen.
    "So I should..." Dice slides his rook out, taking the bishop.
    "See, last week you would have used your queen and the pressure would be off the center board. You took the move that makes your defense even stronger. You are getting better."
    "Speaking of last week..."
    Eddie shrugs, and a knight floats on its hooked path to threaten Dice's queen. "Dr. Ramachandran says that he'd been expecting it to happen. I don't have to go downstairs. But therapy sucks now. I have to use the hand and talk about what I feel."
    "You know, I did that in physio."
    "No, I mean emotional feel."
    "I did, too. Sucks. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want."
    Dice had cried. Cried with his fists clenched and his arms wrapped tight around his middle. Dice didn't think Eddie would want to talk about that. Those are the girl feelings. You must never go there.
    "Doc says that it's important to break down the... mythology. Because raised by a superstitious Catholic, no wait, an asshole who used Catholic superstition as an excuse fucked us up, and left-handedness isn't our fault."
    "It isn't."
    "Just something you're born with, like eye color and—and stuff," Eddie says.
    Dice holds still. "Eddie, are you talking about homosexuality?"
    Eddie shrugs up his shoulders. "That's what they say, right? You're just born that way. It's in the brain."
    "It might be, yeah." Dice says, and he couldn't have a better opening if he tried. Now or never, into the breach, etc. "Eddie, there's something I've been trying to tell you."
    "You're gay."
    "Well, shit. Close enough. I like women. I like men. I hid it because I didn't want—I'm the only family you have left, and you're all the family I have and—"
    "You like both? But then you can just, you know, be with women. No problem, right?"
    The door to the TV room opens, and Natalie walks in, holding it open for Dr. Ramachandran and Susanna Greenwood. Natalie looks at them, then purses her lips up in an "oh." She heads for the couch, browsing through old magazines.
    Maybe with this many people in the room, maybe he should stop talking. But he had to get it all out. "Not that easy. And—there's a guy I like," Dice says.
    Eddie sits back, tips back on the chair, and when it wobbles he lurched forward and the legs thud on the pine floor, squeal as he stands up and walks away from Dice.
    Well. That's it then, Dice thinks.
    But then the lights go out.
    And they don't come back on.
     
    *
     
    Hafidha wants to probe at Donatta's bugzapper, but she promised not to. Dr. Allison doesn't stop her from checking out her own chip, and uses Hafidha's work to adjust future response programming in other live applications, but she (and Suze Zettler, because she's been talking about this with Suze on just about every trip to her old room in the basement) insist on the importance of doing the science properly, carefully. Maybe in six months they'd know enough of what Hafidha intuitively did to make changes for others. For now she just tweaks the work on herself and dumps the new code.
    Dice's pastry lingers in Hafidha's mind. She cocks her head and sends Dice an email: "Lucky. Where are your favorite bakeries? That strudel was good."
    She's on her very best manners. She uses his public email instead of just texting his adorable brick of a dumb phone.
    She walks from the wing used for surgery to the lobby, and heads for the cafeteria. They don't have strudel, but since Anna had consented to stay close to Idlewood, there could be a wealth of brownies to be eaten if she'd had the chance to make a batch.
    She had. Hafidha bought a half dozen—it had just been lunch hour on the floor where she once lived, but there was always room for chocolate. The clear plastic clamshell rested on top of her spindle and fleece, two cartons of milk tucked in