Shane wasn’t terribly surprised when Haru decided to head to bed early. Her panic attacks were usually followed by migraines, and the medicine always made her sleepy. No, what caught him off guard was Jen asking him to stick around once she’d tucked her wife in and bade her goodnight. 

“Sorry to keep you,” Jen said. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot on your mind right now.”

“More’n a little,” he said. “But hell, it’s not like I can do anything about it. What’s up?”

“Nothing serious. I just wanted to pick your brain for a moment,” she said. 

“I can take a guess as to what. Pick away,” he said. 

Jen sighed and, after a moment of consideration, padded over to the kitchen and retrieved a small plastic baggie from the cupboard. 

“Do you mind?” she asked, holding up the vape pen. 

“Go for it,” Shane said. 

“Thanks. You have no idea how glad I was when Texas legalized weed. Never thought I’d see the day,” she said. 

“Tell me about it. It’s amazing what can happen when everyone realizes they have bigger problems to worry about,” he said. 

“That’s sort of what I’m hoping our little family will realize,” Jen said. She took a deep hit from the pen, and coughed ever so slightly as the THC flooded into her system. “I’m still pissed Lauren invited those braindead assholes along, but we’d have to deal with them sooner or later.”

“Yeah, probably,” Shane allowed. “Hell, they might even be useful, in their own way.”

“That’s sort of what I was hoping to ask you about. I know Haru’s dead set on including Lauren in any contingency plan we cook up, but I just don’t see how it’ll work if she comes bundled with those three. Emma’s a sweetheart all by herself, but I can’t stand Rafael, and I don’t like Gene much, either.”

“She’ll balk if you ask her to cut Lauren out,” Shane said. “And I don’t see Lauren cutting the others out.”

“And before you get any ideas, I’m not going to tell you to fuck off, either,” Jen said. “If I had to choose which one of you I’d prefer on my apocalypse team, it’s a no brainer.”

“It’d be the easiest way to keep the peace,” Shane said. 

“It’s not the peace I’m worried about. I can shoot, and I know Haru would go apeshit if someone tried to hurt me or Lauren, but we’re not fighters,” Jen said. “Besides, she’d lose her mind if the apocalypse kicked off and she didn’t have her favorite teddy bear there to help her ground and center.”

“Point.”

“You know, this would be a lot easier if you were the asshole they all think you are,” Jen said. 

Shane snorted into his tea. Haru made a point of preparing a cup for him before she went to bed. 

“Shit. Just talk to my wife about that. I’m sure she’d tell you exactly what sort of asshole I am,” he said. 

“Speaking of Penny, what are you going to do about her?” Jen asked. 

“I expect I’ll have to at least try to recruit her,” Shane said. “We need a doctor, and she’s the closest thing to one I can think of.”

“I mean. Nurse practitioner is basically the same thing, right?”

“Not if you ask a doctor,” he replied. “As for the others…I just don’t know how we’re going to make it work. Something tells me they’ll change their tune if something drastic happens, but short of that? You know me. I can play nice when I have to, but there are limits.”

“I won’t ask you to stay quiet when they’re dragging you through the mud like that. Honestly, it might just be easier to let you guys fight it out, just so they can see where they stand in the pecking order.”

“Wouldn’t end well. I don’t think I could take the both of them, not without seriously hurting someone. One or the other is easy enough, but the only way out of a two on one fight is to put someone in the hospital,” Shane said. “Pretty sure that would poison the well irrevocably.”

“Which brings us right back to where we started,” Jen said. 

“Pretty much. What we’ve got on our hands is a classic dilemma,” Shane said. 

“Oh?”

“In military parlance, a dilemma is a situation with no good ways out. Either you do X, or you do Y, and both options suck. The goal of any decent tactical commander is to create dilemmas for the enemy, not problems,” Shane said. 

“What’s the difference? I always thought the two were interchangeable.”

“Problems have solutions. Maybe not easy solutions, but they can still be solved,” he explained. “If you’re smart about it, you might end up better off than where you started. When faced with a dilemma, all you can really do is choose the least shitty option.”

“In this case, those options are to kick someone or someones out of the group and break Haru’s heart, or try to get along and hope we don’t kill each other,” Jen said. 

“More or less. Neither are particularly attractive, but if I had to choose, I’d rather go with the latter,” Shane said. “Haru needs all three of us to stay on an even keel, and something tells me we’re going to need her at her best if we’re going to see the other side of this thing.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Think about it. If this damned robot of yours is determined to flood the world, our best bet is to take to the seas. She was right about that. Sure, we can always make for high ground to camp out, but that’s just asking for a fight. Eventually, other survivors will come for our shit, or Uncle Sam will get it in his head that folks like us are a menace. Either way, it’s only a matter of time before someone comes along and fucks us up. We might hold out for a while, but all it takes is for one single solitary son of a bitch to come along and get lucky and we’re hosed. Best way to win that fight is not to fight it in the first place. With me so far?”

“I’m with you,” Jen said. 

“Going underground ain’t an option, not if there’s flooding involved, so it stands to reason that the best way to avoid a fight we can’t win is to take to the seas. You heard what Haru said about a submarine.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d take her seriously. She’s always playing those sims, so I just sort of figured she had submarines on the brain.”

Haru’s obsession with sub simulators was an ongoing source of amusement for Shane and exasperation for Jen. The pair could disappear for hours at a time, Haru planning and executing intricate attacks against whatever hapless targets the games could concoct for her while he mostly watched on and provided color commentary. It was the next best thing to impossible to get the pair to emerge from the digital waters at anything like a reasonable hour. 

“Doesn’t mean she’s wrong. If we end up having to Waterworld this shit, a sub’s not a bad option. They’re big enough to hold a metric shitload of supplies, they can hide underwater, and they can even fight in a pinch. Especially if we snag an older museum sub with a working deck gun. Sure as hell beats toughing it out in a yacht or a fishing boat,” Shane said.

“You may have a point,” Jen acknowledged. “And if that is the case, she’s the only one of us who knows how to run the damn things.”

“Exactly. Haru won’t like it. She’ll probably do her damnedest to get someone else in charge,” Shane said. “She hates pressure and she hates conflict, and being a captain of a boat means both. But shit, it’s not like I could do it, or any of those other hooligans, and I doubt you’d want to, either.”

“Hell no,” Jen said. “I’m barely okay with being in charge of myself.”

“So it has to be Haru, and she’ll need her partners, all of us, to pull through it,” Shane said. “So yeah. As much as I’d rather not have to deal with Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber, we’re kinda fucking stuck with them, not unless Lauren decides to ditch them on her own.”

“Which she won’t,” Jen said. “Rafael’s given her just about every excuse in the book to leave his sorry ass, and she sticks with him.”

“Stands to reason the dude has some redeeming qualities we can’t see,” Shane said. “As for Gene, man’s got the hands of a manual laborer. He knows a thing or two about hard work. We’ll need that just as much as we need my guns.”

“I still don’t like it,” Jen said. 

“It’d be weird if you did,” Shane said. “But hell, with any luck, it won’t be our problem. Feds ought to have some sort of plan for dealing with rogue AI. If they take this thing seriously, they can get it shut down before it gets a chance to fuck up our cozy little lives.”

“God, I really hope so,” Jen said. 

“You and me both.”