A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Blaine Anderson. He rose from the bed, stretching, the top of his plaid pajamas rising up and exposing a strip of taut skin just below his belly button.

“Uhhh,” came a groan from the other side of the bed. Concerned, Blaine watched as his wife opened unmerry eyes, blinked, then shut them again with another groan.

“You set your Penfield too weak,” he said to her as he walked to her side of the bed. He sat perched on the edge of the bed and stroked her long, black hair a few times. Patting her head affectionately, he continued. “I can reset it for you. You'll be awake and – ”

“Keep you hand off my settings,” she practically growled at him. “I don't want to be awake.”

Blaine smiled with mock exasperation and bent over her as he softly explained, “You know, Tina, if you set the surge up high enough, you'll be glad you're awake. That's the whole point. At setting C it overcomes the threshold barring consciousness, as it does for me.” He patted her bare shoulder in a friendly manner, not at all deterred by her prickly tone. After all, his setting had been at D.

“I know, Blaine. You don't have to treat me like I'm in Kindergarten,” Tina grumbled, face still buried in the pillow. Unsure how to proceed, Blaine continued to pat her shoulder and she shifted on the bed beneath him. “Mmmm, that feels good. Don't stop.”

Blaine patted her shoulder a few more times and gave it a soft squeeze. Just as he was about to stand up, Tina rolled over in the bed and wrapped her arms around him. “I won't need the mood organ to wake me up if you would just stay here a minute and kiss me.” Blaine stiffened in her arms, but she tugged on his shoulders persistently until he bent down slightly and pressed their lips together in a dry kiss. Tina immediately opened her lips and began kissing Blaine aggressively. “Come on, Blainey-days. Stay in bed with me. Call in sick.”

Tina sucked Blaine's bottom lip between hers, tugging hard. When she ran a hand up Blaine's thigh, he stiffened and pulled away, standing up and stepping out of her grasp. “I don't have time for that right now, Tina. We both know I have to work.”

“Don't know what I was expecting,” Tina mumbled, pulling the covers over her head. Blaine thought he heard the words “loveless marriage.”

“What did you say?” Blaine demanded.

Tina sat up, throwing the covers down to her lap. “I said, ‘I don't want your crude cop's hands on me, anyway.'”

Blaine was startled by her obvious lie. “I'm not a cop,” he said sharply. He felt irritated now, although he hadn't dialed for it.

“You're worse,” Tina said, leveling him with a challenging stare. “You're a murderer hired by the cops.”

“I've never killed a human being in my life.” Blaine had bypassed irritated and was now feeling downright hostile.

Tina smiled at him fakely and said, “Just those poor andys.”

“I notice you've never hesitated to spend the bounty money I bring home.”

“That's not fair,” Tina said, watching Blaine closely. “You know I would work if I could. But there's not much call for midwives when anyone who gets pregnant is automatically shipped off to Mars. I'm stuck, Blaine. I can't work and I can't start a family.” Tina's voice became louder and more strident as she continued, “And every day you go out there and – and what if we never can start a family, Blaine? Don't you ever think about that?”

“We've been through this before,” Blaine said, exasperated. “I can't emigrate because of my job – ”

“Well, isn't that convenient. Your job. It's your answer to everything, isn't it?” Tina raised her voice until she was practically hurling the words, dripping with sarcasm and snark, toward Blaine. “Why do I have to give up my career? Your job. Why do I have to sit around here day after day with nothing to do? Your job.  Why are you home so late every night? Your job. Why do you never have time for sex? Your damn job. Why can't we even have a real animal? Because your damn job doesn't pay enough money.”

“Hey, no. I can't take all the blame for us having that fake electric sheep upstairs instead of having the real thing.” Blaine strode to the console of his mood organ. Scanning the controls he continued, “I've worked so hard, working my way up and earning a good amount of money through the years. You want a job? How about doing a better one managing the household expenses?” Blaine hesitated, fingers hovering above the controls. He was caught between dialing for a suppressant (which would abolish his mood of rage) or a stimulant (which would make him irked enough to win the argument).

“If you dial for more venom,” Tina said, eyes glued to Blaine, “then I'll dial the same. I'll dial the maximum and you'll see a fight that makes every argument we've had up to now seem like nothing. Dial and see. Just try me.” She rose swiftly, loped to the console of her own mood organ and stood glaring at him.

Blaine sighed, defeated by her threat. “I'll dial what's on my schedule for today.” Examining the schedule for January 3, 2081, he saw that a businesslike professional attitude was called for. “If I dial by schedule,” he said warily, “will you agree to do the same?”

“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression,” Tina said, examining her nails.

“What? Why did you schedule that?” It defeated the whole purpose of the mood organ. “I didn't even know you could set it for that,” he said gloomily.

“I was sitting here one afternoon watching television and that awful commercial came on. You know, the one I hate, for Mountibank lead codpieces. And I was thinking about how we're still young. We might still have a chance to have children if we emigrated – ”

“But I can't,” Blaine said, “not now. Because of my j – ”, the unspoken word hanging in the air heavily between them.

“Yes, I know that,” Tina said, rolling her eyes. “That's not the point of what I was saying. Let me finish.”

“Okay,” Blaine conceded, holding his hands up in a conciliatory fashion.

“You know I can't stand that commercial,” Tina continued, “can't stand thinking about what we don't have right now. What we might never have,” her voice trailed off and she stared into the distance for a moment. Blaine dug his fingernails into his palms, willing himself to stay silent until she continued. “I just wanted to think. So I turned off the television and I heard the building. This building. I heard the – “, she gestured.

“The empty apartments,” Blaine said heavily. Sometimes, when he lay awake late at night, he heard them. Although really, a half-full apartment building like theirs is considered a very high population density these days. Further out, in what would have been considered the suburbs before the war, there were building that were completely empty. Or so Blaine had heard. Like most people, he didn't venture out to any of those buildings himself. He had no desire to experience the soul-crushing emptiness and silence first-hand.

“Yes,” Tina nearly whispered, seeing that Blaine understood. “When I heard those empty apartments, my Penfield mood organ setting was a 382 – peaceful contentment. I had just dialed it before turning on the TV. I was thinking about my regrets and then I heard that silence. I should have been sad. Devastated. Despairing. Intellectually, I was aware of the absence of life and I could remember the horrors of the war and its aftermath. I was thinking about all those empty apartments and what that means…but all I could feel was gratitude that we could afford a Penfield mood organ and that I didn't have to feel badly about all the death, the emptiness, the void in my own life. I know you probably don't really understand this. But back before the war, having your thoughts not match your feelings would have been considered a sign of a serious mental illness. Lack of appropriate affect, I think they called it. So I sat down in front of the mood organ console and spent the entire morning hunting through the settings until I found one for despair,” she beamed triumphantly, as though this were something to be proud of. “So I put it on my schedule twice a month. I think that's an appropriate amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who's smart has emigrated, don't you?”

“But Tina,” Blaine admonished, stepping toward her, his brow wrinkled with concern, “a mood like that, you're apt to stay in it, not dial your way out. Despair like that is self-perpetuating. I worry about you. What if you can't get out of it? What if you hurt yourself?”

“Don't worry about that, Blaine,” Tina said sleekly. “I program an automatically resetting after a few hours. A 481. Awareness of the manifold possibilities open to me in the future; new hope that – ”

“I know 481,” he interrupted. He had dialed that combination many times; he relied on it greatly. “Listen,” he said, taking her hand in his and petting it lightly, as though her very skin were precious to him. “Even with an automatic cutoff like that, it's still dangerous to go into a depression. Please forget what you've scheduled and I'll forget mine. We can dial a 104 and experience it together and then you can stay in it and I'll go back to my usual businesslike attitude. That way, I'll want to go up to the roof and check on our electric sheep and then head to the office. And I won't have to worry that you're here brooding alone with no TV.

Blaine walked into the living room, grabbed the remote from the coffee table, and clicks the television to life.

Tina stumbled out of the bedroom behind him and grumbled, “But I can't stand television before breakfast.”

“Then dial 888,” Blaine replied over his shoulder. “The desire to watch television no matter what's on.”

“Uggh,” groaned Tina. “I don't want to dial any mood right now.”

“Then just dial 3,” said Blaine practically.

“I can't dial a setting for the desire to dial,” Tina practically shouted in frustration. “The whole point is that I don't want to dial anything right now. I want to dial 3 least of all.”

Blaine ignored Tina and flipped through the channels on the television to find the news. “Looks like heavy fallout today,” boomed the jovial newscaster, pointing to a map behind him showing a large red cloud over the entire city. “It will be getting steadily more pronounced until about noon before it begins to taper off, so for those of you venturing out – ”

“I'm sorry,” Tina said, wrapping her arms around Blaine's middle from behind and pressing her forehead against his back. “I'll dial whatever you want, okay?”

Blaine grinned and pulled out of Tina's arms. He turned and placed a brief kiss on the top of her head before walking back to her mood organ and dialing a 722, acknowledgement of spouse's superior wisdom in all matters.

After a rushed breakfast, he finished getting dressed, including snapping on his Ajax model Mountibank lead codpiece, a raincoat and a hat to protect against the persistent, gray dust falling from the sky. The legacy of World War Terminus had diminished in potency. Those who couldn't survive the dust had perished long ago. The dust was weaker now and it no longer threatened death to the strong survivors. But it still degenerated minds and reproductive organs. So far, he and Tina had continued to pass the regular, mandatory medical tests that show that they are able to reproduce within the limits dictated by law. Any month, however, the exam by the San Francisco Police Department doctors could say otherwise. Every month, new specials were created out of regulars by the omnipresent dust. Each day the message blared loud and clear from the television, radio, and print ads: “Emigrate or degenerate: the choice is yours.” He knew this was true, but at the same time, Blaine wasn't sure that he wanted to emigrate to Mars. He wasn't really sure whether he wanted to have children, even though he knew Tina did. It was easier to just point to his job and let that make the decision for him. After all, his job only exists on Earth, so emigrating would mean finding a new profession.

Fully dressed, Blaine ascended to the covered roof pasture where his electric sheep “grazed” in simulated contentment, bamboozling the other tenants of the building. Of course, some of their animals were probably electronic circuitry fakes, too. But no one would ever ask. Nothing could be more impolite. To ask, “is your sheep genuine?” would be a worse breach of etiquette than asking if someone's own hair, teeth or internal organs would test out authentic.

The owner of the adjoining pasture, Finn Hudson, hailed him. He, like Blaine, had dressed for work but had stopped off on the way to check on his animal.

“Blaine, hi!” said Finn jovially. “Guess what? My horse is pregnant.” He gestured proudly toward the big Arabian, which stood staring emptily into space. “Isn't that awesome, dude?”

It took Blaine a moment to swallow down his jealousy and school his face into a pleasant mask. “That's so great, Finn. I'm so happy for you. But, um, how did she get pregnant? There aren't any stud horses nearby, are there?” Blaine had reached his sheep. Its alert eyes were fixed on him in case he had brought any oats. The alleged sheep contained an oat-tropic circuit; at the sight of such cereals it would scramble up convincingly and amble over.

“Naw, dude. You're right. No other horses around. But I bought some high quality fertilizing plasma – I ordered it online. I had to inject it myself, though. That was kind of gross.” Finn grimaced at the memory for a moment before a dopey grin returned to his face. “That guy from the State Animal Husbandry Board suggested it. Remember when he was out here to inspect Judy? They really want her to have a foal. She's an unmatched superior.”

“Would you consider selling the colt?” Blaine asked. He pulled out his phone and did a quick search on the Sydney's Animal Supply app for colt, subtype: Arabian, class: superior. “Sydney's says $5,000.” Blaine ran a quick calculation in his head. “I could give you $500 a month for ten months. Full catalog value.”

“No, man. Check you app again. It's in blue, right?”

Blaine looked at the phone and saw the price was indeed in blue.

Finn continued, “That's what the price would have been, if any are available. But they're out of stock. That's because no one is going to part with an Arabian horse. And you know why, before World War Terminus, there were literally thousands of – ”

“But then you'd have two horses,” Blaine said petulantly. “That would be unfair for you to have two when other people have none. It goes against Mercerism.”

“Seriously? Come on, Blaine. Even I know better than that,” Finn protested. “It doesn't go against Mercerism to have two animals or even more. Lots of people have more than one animal. My boss has two donkeys and you know that Mr. Motta guy, the protective wear tycoon– he has five animals. They just ran that story about his duck in the paper...” Both men looked into the distance trying to imagine such riches. “Besides, you have your sheep,” said Finn. “If you didn't have any animal at all I could see your argument about it not being empathetic for me to refuse to sell you the colt.” As Finn continued to babble, Blaine bent down and scratched at the wool on the fake sheep's side, searching for the control panel.  “I think everyone in the building has some kind of animal. Even Sandy Ryerson has a cat, or at least he says he does. I don't know if anyone's ever been in his apartment – oh shit!”

Finn uttered that last phrase just after Blaine popped open the electric circuitry panel on the sheep, revealing his secret to his neighbor. “Oh, Blaine,” Finn said sadly. “I'm so sorry, man. Has it always been this way?”

“No,” Blaine said, snapping the panel shut again and smoothing the wool back into place over it. “We had a real sheep when we first moved here. Tina's parents gave it to us when they emigrated. About two years ago, he got sick. Do you remember when I had the vet over to look at him? It was tetanus. A piece of rusty wire got stuck in one of the bales of hay and he chewed on it, cut the inside of his mouth, got an infection and died.”

“That really sucks, man.” Finn said sagely, giving Blaine a comforting pat on the arm.

“The vet suggested we could get an electric sheep to replace Groucho. So I sent the false animal company a picture of him and they made this. It's a good replica.”

“Wow,” Finn said, looking uncomfortable. “I can't imagine what it would be like to not have an animal.”

“Well, I spend just as much time caring for it as I would if it was real,” said Blaine defensively. “I feed it and clean up after it every day. And the false animal shop sends someone for regular tune-ups. They're called animal hospital something and the driver of the van even wears a white coat like a regular vet. So I think we've been able to fool everyone so far. But it's nerve wracking sometimes. When something goes wrong – like last month, when something happened with it's speaker and it wouldn't stop baaing – anyone who heard it would realize it was a mechanical breakdown.” Blaine glanced at his watch and sucked in a sharp breath. “I'm going to be late. I better go.”

Blaine walked toward his hovercar with broad strides, but Finn's voice stopped him in his tracks. “I won't tell anyone. About your sheep I mean.”

Blaine turned and looked at Finn with a wistful smile. “Thanks. But I don't really know if it matters.”

“It does,” Finn says authoritatively. “Not caring for an animal. People would look down on you. I mean, it's not illegal anymore, like it was right after World War T, but it's still frowned upon.”

“It's not like I don't want to care for an animal,” Blaine insisted. “I want one so much. But on a city employee's salary…” He wouldn't be able to afford it, even on a payment plan. Not unless he were to get lucky in his work again. Like that time three years ago when he was able to retire two andys in one month.

“I can understand if you can't afford another sheep right now,” Finn said carefully. “But why don't you get another animal. Like a cat. They're cheap.”

“No, I don't want a house pet. I want a big animal,” insisted Blaine. “If I could afford it, I would get another sheep. Or a steer. Or what you have. A horse.”

The bounty from five andys would do it, he realized. Five thousand dollars, over and above his salary. If he could retire five andys, he would find someone who would sell him a horse, even if the listing on Sydney's was in blue. But first the andys would have to come to Earth. And they would have to come to his particular jurisdiction. If they land outside of the greater San Francisco area then another bounty hunter would be given the opportunity. Blaine sighed and shook his head. Even if five andys somehow made their way to San Francisco, Blaine still wouldn't be able to go after them. He wasn't the senior bounty hunter with the department. Shannon Beiste would have to retire or die first.

Finn pulled Blaine from his thoughts with a hand on his arm. Finn had closed the distance between them while Blaine was in his reverie. Finn laughingly jokes, “You could buy a mouse. Or a cricket. They're cheap.”

Finn continued to grip Blaine's arm and gave it a squeeze then jiggled it, trying to force a response to his teasing. Blaine looked up at Finn and smiled in spite of himself. Finn let go of his arm, but didn't back away. Blaine had to crane his neck to meet Finn's eyes. The height difference stirred something primal within him and he had to bite his tongue to keep from stupidly saying, “You're really tall.” Silently, Blaine stared into Finn's eyes and grinned, feeling his heart pound against his chest and feeling a blush rise to his cheeks.

“Um, are you okay?” Finn asked, breaking the spell.

Blaine jumped back as if from an electric shock, putting a socially acceptable space between them. Startled and angry with himself for first revealing the secret of the electric sheep and then almost revealing another, much more dangerous secret about himself, Blaine shook his head. Gathering up all the venom he could muster, Blaine said, “Your horse could die, you know. Get a scratch from a wire, like Groucho did, and get tetanus.”

“What the hell, man?” Finn said, taking a step back.

Blaine just glared at him and said darkly, “You could come home from work today and she could be lying on the ground, dead, her feet in the air, like a bug. Like what you said. A cricket.”

“I'm sorry if I offended you,” said Finn nervously.

Blaine plucked open the door to his hovercar and resolutely kept himself from glancing back at his neighbor. Instead, he focused his thoughts on his work and the day ahead.