One week later...

I should tell her everything.

"Mads? You ok?" Regina asked, her brow creasing.

"Yeah. Sorry, zoned out." Madison rejected the thought and returned her attention to their conversation. The impulse had bubbled up from that chthonic well of irrationality that she was still learning to use; that seemed to be happening unbidden a lot lately.

"Don't sweat it," Regina chuckled and sipped her coffee. "You've got a lot on your mind."

They were sitting at a picnic table in the campus commons and drinking mediocre coffee from the student union. Regina was one of the first people Madison met at college and remained one of her closest friends. Madison had just given her the fake narrative she and Ross agreed upon about their visit to her family, but she sensed that Regina had another question she wasn't sure how to ask.

"So what are you up to these days?" Madison prompted.

Regina sipped her coffee pensively. "Mostly worrying about Calc 3. Dr. Cooper is a real son of a bitch, you know?"

Madison nodded. He had a well-known tendency to leer at his female students and their grades seemed to be mostly based on how well they tolerated it. Regina was attractive, but not particularly subtle about her distaste for Cooper's flirting.

"I went to see the new TA, Lauren," she said. "Did you know she's a golem?"

"I heard that. How was it? Did she seem robotic?"

Regina leaned forward, eager to talk about it. "Not at all. It was crazy, Mads! If I didn't know she was a golem I never would have guessed! I didn't know they could pass that well. It's fucking weird."

Tell her you're a golem. Nope, Madison thought. "That is weird! So she wasn't like all the cashiers and busboys and stuff?"

"Not at all. She acted just like a normal person, but when I asked her she admitted she was a golem. Hey, you wanna go talk to her right now?"

There it was. Madison noticed that she was developing a sort of intuition about people. She somehow understood from the beginning of the conversation that Regina wanted to ask her something but wasn't sure how.

"Sure!" she said cheerfully. "I've never really talked to a golem before. I mean, other than to order food or whatever."

Regina stood eagerly and put on her backpack. "You never know," she said as they started across the campus towards the math building. "Lauren is amazingly realistic. It makes me wonder if there might be other golems we don't even know about. For all we know, half the faculty isn't human!"

"For all you know, I'm not human." Madison said with a twinkle in her eye.